Destiny: Records of the Dawn
by A Gilled Locomotive
Summary: (Under Revision) An ancient tome tells the story of the Light and Darkness, in their final great war for the cosmos. And how, from this dreaded struggle, arose a warrior of a different calling; a bearer of the dawn.
1. Logic

I: Logic

There has always been, and always will be, the cycle. The expanding and contracting of the cosmos like that of a beating heart; every complete pulse a reality born and ended.

At its very foundations, there has always been peace and conflict. A duality of creation and destruction, much like the cycle itself.

Coexisting matter and atoms join together to mold the universe's shape, while those that oppose them break their creations down into nothing. Like-minded peoples and nations scheme to execute their goals, while secretly or boldly destroying their enemies. Be it between the fundamental matters of the universe or the grandest civilizations, the existence of conflict and peace has remained an undeniable truth.

And from that truth, came two lies.

Splitting the unbreakable fact, these twin lies sought to make themselves the new truth in its place. They wished to make realities of only one polarity, bathed in unending war or unending peace.

These were the Logics, as all would know them. They were known by many names, the Darkness and the Light; the Deep and the Sky; the Sword-Logic and the Shield-Logic.

It is not remembered when they truly began, these lies; a tragic symptom of reality's unceasing death and rebirth.

These great living concepts drew upon the one truth they stemmed from to fuel their dualistic power, molding the cosmos to fit their visions. In time, life that possessed the gift to think took to naming these Logics as gods, benevolent to those who followed their paths, and wrathful to those who defied them.

And like the deities they were considered, they grew to seek dominion over all things.

The Logic of conflict would prey upon death to make itself true, the Logic of peace would prey upon life to do the same. One was the perfect final shape of reality, the other a beacon of endless prosperity.

They were none of these things.

In the so-called perfect truth that both bore, they had created and deceived even themselves with a perfect lie. The lie that either could truly exist without the other to oppose them; the undeniable truth both wished to eventually usurp.

Even those who call for peace will know war, and how to wage it. Even in its demise, the Logic of Death would hold truth, for only that which is strongest may exist.

Even those who call for war will know peace, and how to maintain it. Even in its demise, the Logic of Life would hold truth, for that which remains can only know peace.

In that balance, there was the truth.

Neither logic could truly cease without the other's destruction, no matter how it may be brought about. Only in shared annihilation could either one of them truly end.

Through this connection, both Logics would be reborn with the very universe they fought to subjugate. The supposed victor of the past world would step into the successor realm, spreading its divine truth, only for its opposite to arrive with time, and begin their war anew.


	2. A Past Forgotten

II: A Past Forgotten

At the beginning, there was nothing. Then, everything began again, as it always had and always would.

The first stars burst to life, casting their glow across the universe. Around them, life grew. Each of its forms grew and changed and evolved, developing societies and building inventions to explore their reality.

Freedom was to be had for all. The freedom to truly choose one's fate, to make their own path in the universe. Things were of the one unbreakable truth; the path between.

But as cultures and species met and evolved, they came to experience peace and conflict. Thus, the Logics were called forth once more, revitalized by the nature they had defined for themselves. They tore open the wall between the dead universe and its vibrant revival, stepping into the present tomorrow.

In the past world, the universe had been consumed by black woe, broken under the entropy of Darkness. And by the right of that victory, it was first to step into the fertile new lands.

Out of the brief tear in space and time walked the Darkness' sole avatar, the twin-horned Duskbringer.

Once, in his now deceased reality, he had followed the prosperous Light. In its service, he had been a champion of luminescence, striking against the Darkness with righteous might. But when the Death-Logic had threatened his own people, he fell short.

In defeat, he was broken by its dark lie, molded into an agent of its destructive will. With his conversion, the Hated One brought death to his home realm, becoming the final catalyst to the Light's smothering.

But his fall would prove to mean something in the new world. His blows against the Darkness and his betrayal of the Light had weakened both Logics severely. They had been dragged from their seats of godhood, made mortal by his acts. Both required a host, a corporeal form to house their living ideological consciousnesses.

At the end of the past world, the Duskbringer had offered his form to the Darkness, to become its avatar through which it could eventually reclaim its lost status. The Death-Logic had accepted this charity, for his form had broken the lying Light. This was a contradiction, for power was not to be gifted but Taken, but the Darkness did not care.

The Duskbringer was pleased by this, for in having been servant to both Logics, he had pierced their perfect lies, and glimpsed the one unbreakable truth. In this knowledge, he had found a fragment of a dream, that one day he could unveil these deceptions to all, and cast both dreadful understandings into oblivion.

But, for now, he would play his part. For now, he would bring Darkness on the infant universe, until he could learn how to expunge the both Logics from it.

At first, his campaign was slow, destroying world by world with his frightful black sword. But in the farthest corner of this new universe, the Duskbringer came upon a curious people, who had set about attempting to understand reality's secrets. They built titanic engines of thought to ponder existence, shaping them into pyramidic and spherical forms from living metal.

The Darkness was intrigued by these great machines, and so demanded the Duskbringer to drown them and their creators in its Taking embrace. Its host obeyed, creating the architects and their veiled horde with which he would build the new cosmos of death. The great machines and their vast minds were converted into extensions of the Darkness' own consciousness, a guised trick by the traitorous Duskbringer to spare his limited free will from the Death-Logic's crushing influence.

In a horde of perfect black shapes, the Duskbringer and his Architects spread catastrophic ruin to countless fledgling races, carving a vast black edge of nothingness into the universe. In the nexus of the killing power he attained, and in the place between time, the Duskbringer planted a seed of misery.

From it, the Black Garden sprouted, spreading its roots across the stream of time and space.

It would be the center of the Darkness, the place in which true life, life that had earned its right to exist, could thrive. There, every flower was a life taken; every tree was a sundered world; every river was a galaxy of spilled blood. The Duskbringer, as the aptly-named Gardener, set about nurturing his creation and its many flowers, gorging them on calamitous tribute.

For millions of years, Darkness alone ruled over the new world, inexorably carving life from its corners. The Black Garden grew to stretch beyond its own sunless horizon.

For the Darkness, everything was as it was meant to be, until a Light began shimmering in the gloom.

One of the Architects, one of the Great Machines, had looked upon the devastation wrought by the dark, the war and unbridled wrath that doomed so much great knowledge and life to oblivion, and felt utter horror.

In this moment of moral upheaval, the Light was reborn, resurrected by the Great Machine's yearning for peace.

The Light whispered a lie of peace into the construct's ears, and the machine took it for truth. This Great Machine welcomed the calming Light into its being, in doing so becoming its sole luminous avatar; just as the Gardener was that of Darkness. This first Light was so brilliant that the machine's iron flesh became bleached and pristine; a permanent and bold signifier of its newfound allegiance.

But, in taking on the Life-Logic, the Great Machine had betrayed its former comrades, whose dark components twisted and whirred in black fury.

So, the Great Machine fled, becoming a traveler of the stars, doling out knowledge and power to races both innocent and beyond redemption. All the while, the Architects, with their black armies and swarms of perfect shapes, hounded its white hide through the void of space.

The war had begun anew.


	3. Wish Eaters

III: Wish Eaters

Millions of years in flight had shown the Traveler it could not hope to face the Darkness alone. For every world it seeded with life and knowledge, five more were crushed under the Darkness' heel. No matter what gifts of matter transmutation or gravitic indifference it delivered, the Traveler's uplifted races could not stand against the Architects and their Veil. Thus, the Darkness grew unabated by the Light.

However, in this continuous chase, both Light and Darkness met a bizarre anomalies in their campaigns of dominion. Two species who fed on the anthem anatheme, the desires and wishes of sentient life, had come to exist in the new universe.

First were the Ahamkara, wish-dragons who morphed into myriad forms to deceive their prey. In granting the wishes of their victims, they fed on the fulfillment of desires. But for every wish made and granted, the wishmaker would amass a debt to their wish-dragon. In the end, they would be devoured by the shapeshifters, their essence consumed to fuel its growth. Even those who saw through the one-sided pacts and slew the offending creatures were doomed, for the shapeshifters could transcend death through their bones and hearts. In death, their remains spoke quiet compliments and provocations to those who clutched them, prodding to be fed more wishes; so that they may return from oblivion.

Second of these predators were the Worms, who forced wishmakers to ingest their larvae to feed upon desires. Through this grotesque link, the inhabiting Worm would imbue the host with the power to make their dreams a reality, but at a cost. For every wish fulfilled, the Worm's appetite would grow. The power attained by the parasite would be tithed to their parent Worm, whose own ravenousness would swell with time. Inevitably, no matter how many desires they fed to their Worm, the host would be consumed from within.

Born ignorant of both Logics, these duplicitous parasites were unconscious followers of the old truth, freely preying upon and sparing whomever they chose. For this unaligned nature, they were seen as abominations by the Logics, meant to be vanquished or tamed under their false truths.

The Ahamkara, far more clever than their Worm competitors, adapted to the presence of the Logics, learning to follow the Traveler in its flight through the universe, preying upon the foolish races uplifted by its Light. The Darkness' minions, who proved more difficult in swindling, came to be a prized delicacy to them.

While the wish-dragons cloaked themselves as friends, family, and other benevolent benefactors of their prey, the Worms did not hide their forms, letting all bask in the horrid majesty of their great wings and chattering maws. More unlike the Ahamkara, they could not transcend death, leaving them with their one and only life. Their boldness and mortality invited their victim races to hunt them, driving the Worms into near-extinction, with the last five fleeing into the dark void.

There, these five would encounter the Architects and their Veil, implanting their spawn in those who were greedy for power. When these Veil, who through their secret Worms had accomplished great slaughter, withered and died, the Gardener was quick to discover the Worms. Fat with power, the five were brought before him in the Black Garden. Impressed by their ability to deceive and take for themselves, the Darkness communed with the Worms, and enraptured them with its lies.

These last five became the Worm Gods, terrible enactors of the Darkness' will. No longer would they feed off wishes and desires, but instead from death and strength. In accepting the Darkness, they learned to transcend death like the Ahamkara, speaking through their dried corpses and morphing their bodies into new parasites.

Spreading their vile children across the Traveler's uplifted worlds, the Worms Gods became feared by billions, and worshipped by trillions more. Seeing its followers be drowned in such horror broke a chord in the Traveler's mind, the first of many. No longer would it sit idly by as its creations were sundered by these Worms and their leeching nature. It would contain these beasts, place them somewhere in which they could not escape; if only for a time.

To this end, the Traveler sought an ally to face the Worms, finding the once benign Leviathan, a massive serpent whose species had been devoured by the Worms, leaving it the last of its kind. Imbuing the pale beast with burning Light, the Traveler cleansed the larvae that infested its followers' worlds.

Facing extinction once more, the Worm Gods fled into the liquid core of the gas giant Fundament, so deep and crushing in its blackness not even the Leviathan could enter. The white serpent dedicated itself to patrolling the core's outer edge, ensuring the Worm Gods would never escape their prison.

Meanwhile, the Traveler realized that, in its hunt for the Worms, the Architects had veered to ravage another far-off galaxy, intent on ignoring the Light so that it could seed more unwilling tribute. Unknowing to their schemes, the Traveler spread life across the fifty-two moons of Fundament, raising hundreds of races upon them.

For billions of years, the Traveler toiled away at creating peace and prosperity in the Fundament System, as the Leviathan held by its devoted watch. All the while, the Worm Gods patiently festered and hungered in the shadows, awaiting their chance at freedom and vengeance.

The great Worms would find their means to liberation in a race of krillfolk. And in these same meager creatures, the weary universe would learn to fear another dark shape.


	4. New Shapes To Fear

IV: New Shapes To Fear

It began on Fundament, that fifty-two and one mooned world, where fragments of a shattered planet drifted over a sea of gas. On these floating continents, a race of krill lived short fearful lives, while on the many moons above, the Ammonites and other races prospered in the Traveler's Light.

Deep below, in the dark liquid core of the world, the Worm Gods festered from hunger, for the Leviathan guarded against their escape. But in the krillfolk of the floating continents above, they saw a desperate people, one that would free them to save itself. Thus, the Worm Gods used their power to disturb Fundament's moons, and sent a single larvae to the distant shores above.

Three of the krill came down to meet them.

These three were curious Aurash, clever Sathona, and brave Xi Ro. They were the Osmium Sisters, daughters of the murdered king and heirs to the Osmium Court's throne. Their father, who had prophesied the coming of a Syzygy, a great tidal disaster that would sunder the continents; had been betrayed by the caretaker Taox, who listened to his words and heard only madness. Driven by pragmatism, she had made a deal with the rival kingdom of the Helium Drinkers: slay the royal family, and she would rule under their thumb. The Osmium Sisters had escaped the ensuing assassination, unlike their father, swearing to not only claim vengeance on Taox and her co-conspirators, but to also prevent the nearing apocalypse. Led by Sathona's words, they had repaired an ancient submersible and dove into the deep.

On the edge of the deep core, they met the somber Leviathan, who admitted it had taken a fondness to their short-lived people. Despite this empathy, it had asked them to turn back; to not seek out the deep and its dark secrets. But when the Leviathan could not provide a solution to the coming disaster, the sisters ignored its pleas and traveled deeper.

In the lightless depths, they found the Worm Gods. They had been guided by Sathona, who in turn had listened to the whispers from the Worm's dead scout; the same wielded by their father in predicting the Syzygy. The Worm Gods offered the power to claim their vengeance and escape the tidal cataclysm. In exchange, the sisters and their people would nurture the death eaters and their writhing children through slaughter.

Accepting this pact, Aurash took the king morph, becoming Auryx; Sathona took the mother morph, becoming Savathûn; and Xi Ro took the knight morph, becoming Xivu Arath. They became the first Shapers; those who would carve the cosmos into a new shape.

The siblings spread the Worms across Fundament, scattering the Helium Drinkers under their might. A panicked Taox fled the world and into the embrace of the Ammonite. To chase their betrayer, the Osmium Siblings learned to cut tears in space itself with their words and swords, sieging the Ammonites with fleets of tombships.

When Auryx attempted to broker peace with the enemy, Savathûn killed him at the Worm Gods' behest, causing her kingly brother to discover his Throne-world. In this realm built by his strength, Auryx was lord and master, and could return from death itself using it. However, should he be slain within this plane of supremacy, he would truly die.

Auryx named his Throne-world the High Court, from which he would rule as king. Savathûn, ever emulative of her brother, dubbed her realm the High Coven, from which she would probe secrets and forge schemes. Xivu Arath, as the God of War, proclaimed her Throne-world to be wherever battle raged, planting it on the edge of the materium.

With their newfound immortality and the hardened will of Auryx, the Shapers slaughtered the lunar races of Fundament, while the Worm Gods, bolstered by their new fount of death, devoured the pale flesh of the Leviathan. In face of the chaos, the fearful Traveler fled Fundament. Taox similarly raced from the destruction, escaping into parts unknown through cryostasis. Spurred by their Worm Gods, the Shapers chased after the Great Machine, forgetting their quest for vengeance as their new power overwhelmed them.

Devoting themselves to the Sword-Logic, where strength ruled over all, they ravaged the civilizations of their home galaxy, practicing their death worship upon one another through infighting. As they grew in power, the sibling gods took to dividing the Shapers into three broods. To record the devastation they wrought, the Shapers created the Worlds' Grave, a vast receptacle of knowledge gathered from the species they destroyed, and of the campaigns to eradicate them.

Their species' great crisis would arrive with their conflict against the Ecumene, an alliance of races that held mastery over physical matter and reality's causal laws. Repelled at every turn, the Shapers' Worms grew starved and restless, and began to consume the lowest among the former krillfolk. Through these deaths, the Osmium Siblings realized the betraying nature of their Worms, whose appetites would inevitably grow too large for them to sate.

In desperation to save their people, mighty Xivu offered her death to Auryx. When Savathûn offered her own, Auryx struck before she could wield her hidden knife. With the power granted by his sisters' deaths, Auryx tore into the Throne-world of his patron Worm God; Akka, the Worm of Secrets.

There, he confronted the beast, cutting it to pieces and stealing its secrets from them. Auryx forged the Tablets of Ruin from these secrets, and learned to Take; a vile practice by which his victims were morphed by the Darkness itself and bound to his will.

He became Oryx, the Taken King.

The Ecumene screamed as their defenses shattered under the weight of warped creatures that were once their fellows. By defining their nature under the Darkness' law, Oryx revived his sisters, and they carved the Ecumene from the universe. In this victory, Oryx declared the tithing system, a mimicry of the Worm's own system, in which all Shapers would take only what they needed, gifting the rest to their superiors and to their three gods. Thus, no Worm would go hungry, and they would live to witness the perfect final shape. Their survival seemingly assured, the Shapers continued their campaign of destruction, erasing millions of worlds from the universe.

Oryx, having become strongest among his siblings, traveled into the Balck Garden to speak with the Darkness itself. There, he spoke with the Deep through the Gardener, learning studiously from its bleak philosophy. When his sisters attempted to strand him in the land of roses, thereby dooming him to be devoured by his Worm, Oryx poisoned their tithings, ensuring neither would be able to directly challenge him again. To further safeguard his position, the Taken King chose to sire children.

These children were the twins Ir Halak and Ir Anûk, as well as his sons Crota and Nokris. His two daughters, the Deathsingers, proved masters of the arcane, weaving hymns and chants that shattered all who heard them. Crota proved mighty with the sword, but was also naive and brazen. Lastly, Nokris was of weak body, unlike his brother, and thus dedicated himself to understanding the universe, in mimicry of his father.

Ir Halak and Ir Anûk, with their fiendish intellects, devised the Oversouls; a weaponization of one's raw strength in the Darkness. By warping the laws of reality, the user could temporarily expel their Throne-world's power into the materium, shattering all within range of the blast. The Shapers Gods and their Ascendant underlings quickly adopted this death weapon into their tools of destruction.

Crota, eager to impress his kingly father, was fooled by his deceitful aunt Savathûn into cutting a tear in time and space, accidentally summoning forth a tide of brass machines into his father's Throne-world. These machines were not alien to the universe, merely of a different place and period.

Despite Crota and the Deathsingers' efforts to expel them, these vexing things rooted themselves in the Throne-world, constructing Quria, Blade Transform to study and comprehend the Sword-Logic. Oryx returned to his realm, forcing the Vex back through the wound in space. Before he sealed the tear into his domain, Oryx flung Crota through the Vex gates, banishing him to either return more powerful or die forgotten in another time. The Hope-Eater would survive his trial, having learned to follow his father with loyalty and practice restraint in his goals.

In order to protect his Throne-world from future intrusions, Oryx forged a great Dreadnaught from part of Akka's writhing corpse, forcing his High Court inside of it. Now teetering between reality and the immaterium, Oryx's Throne-world could only be invaded by those bearing greater power in the Sword-Logic than he; a highly improbable condition, at least among the Shapers.

The first test of this vessel arrived with the resurgent Vex, once more led by Quria. Oryx obliterated the cyborg invaders, and, intrigued by its powers of simulation, Took the Blade Transform. In the aftermath of the failed invasion, Oryx gifted the Taken Quria to Savathûn, both as a taunt on her scheme's failure and out of kinship.

The next folly of Oryx's children came from Nokris, whose feebleness had only been exacerbated by the growth of his own siblings. Seeking power through knowledge like his father had, Nokris went to the horrid Worm Gods. Each refused his offers of servitude, except the weakest among them, Xol, Will of the Thousands; the Wingless Worm. Seeing himself in the frail son, Xol gifted Nokris with forbidden comprehension, who from these teachings learned the foul power of necromancy.

A triumphant Nokris returned to his father and display his mastery in undoing death, returning a dead Thrall from oblivion. Outrage gripped Oryx, for reversing death was to reverse the perfect final shape of the universe. In his fury, the Taken King banished his heretical son, erasing all records of his existence from the Worlds' Grave; save for a statue to memorialize his failure.

However, Nokris found a new liberty in his exile, seeing it as a means to grow beyond his father's limitations. With a small fleet of his underlings, the Disgraced Son journeyed the cosmos, gathering tithing for his patron-god Xol.

Upon devastating the Harmony, a race that inhabited the Traveler-altered accretion disk of a black hole, the Osmium Siblings split from one another. Savathûn, wanting to grow in power separately from Oryx, set her fleets into the oppressive black hole; where she could seek grander secrets. Xivu Arath, feeling limited by her brother's power, led her followers to journey into the stars.

With that, Oryx was alone. In his new solitude, the Taken King created five Books of Sorrow, in which he recorded his life from its beginning to the annihilation of the Harmony. He hoped that in reading these bleak volumes, whomever may kill him would come to understand him.

His story recorded, Oryx set his Dreadnaught and his fleet after the Traveler's supple white flesh, devouring the worlds and galaxies it uplifted.


	5. Rise of Some, Fall of Others

V: Rise of Some, Fall of Others

Billions of years would pass, seeing billions of races and worlds raised up by the Traveler, and crushed underfoot by the Architects and Shapers. The cycle of life and death continued abated.

Across the universe, far from the battles of Light and Darkness, the foundations of life had begun to flourish in a distant and isolated star system. The unbridled gravitational forces of its sun and planets gathered dark matter into great currents of cosmic dust. When life began to wander the surface of a small green and blue world, they unknowingly altered these currents, providing the necessary and nigh-impossible shift to produce a miraculous new intelligence.

They grew to call themselves the Nine.

These dark matter entities, sustained by the gravity of the star system they were born within, learned to control their dark matter realm. In time, they grew curious of the lifeforms they depended on for existence, peering into the world of normal matter. The unique laws of their dark matter reality, crafted by hand into bizarre and perplexing shapes, allowed them to divine the nature of the Light and Darkness, though they could not see past their lies. As the millennia dragged on, the Nine became obsessed over the realm of normal matter, one which by their very nature they could not enter. They sought a means to become free of their dual prison and sanctuary, so that they could explore the mad and alien universe.

For now, they would lie in wait.

Millions of years later, the great chase between the Logics had traveled to the home galaxy of these dark matter beings and their star system, though only just reaching its far edge.

Along the rim of this galaxy lived the Eliksni, an arachnid people of proud nobility. Resilient and adaptive, they relied only upon the life-giving Ether, produced by their pink-rivered homeworld, to survive. They divided themselves into several Houses, ruled by their Barons, Archons, and a single great Kell; each a legend unto themselves. To maintain peace between these factions, another House was formed to broker peace, the House of Judgement, who garnered great respect from the Eliksni people.

They would eventually be visited by the Traveler, and be blessed with its knowledge. Reaching out to their neighboring star systems, the Eliksni colonized worlds with their Light-given advances. To supply their colonies with Ether, the Eliksni created the Servitors, machines crafted in homage of the Traveler's circular image, who could deconstruct matter to produce the essence artificially.

Shortly after settling these planets, infighting erupted between the Houses for control of their resources. The House of Judgement, with aid from the secretive House of Kings, ended these Edge Wars, sparking a Golden Age for the Eliksni. During this time, the House of Rain, well-known for their visions of the future, prophesied that a "Kell of Kells" would rise to unite the Houses and lead the Eliksni into a new era. Such a prophecy would live on for centuries, though no apparent heir to its words would appear during the Golden Age.

This prosperity ended when a great whirlwind tore through their empire, burning its pristine lands without mercy. This "storm" was helmed by the Taken King, who sought for his brood to devour the Traveler. Unaware of the King's power, the Eliksni fought valiantly to defend their homeworld; only for their god of living metal to flee and leave them to oblivion.

Disarrayed by their abandonment, the Eliksni were driven into near-extinction, with the so-called whirlwind leaving to chase the Traveler rather than finish off the race. Those few Houses that still remained struggled to survive with what little they had, fighting over the scraps of their civilization. During this time, pessimistic voices began referring to their race as "Fallen," a title that quickly grew to replace their original name.

In the face of their collapse, Fallen culture began to morph from one of nobility into one of self-preservation and fanatical belief. Their new environment of meager survival created a society where ascending the ranks of one's House became the sole goal of many, second only to revering the Great Machine. With the natural Ether of their world burned away by the Whirlwind, the Servitors were left as the only source of the Fallen life force, and so came to be revered as gods for it.

Under this new pantheon, where the Traveler had created the Servitors as enactors of its divine will, a triumvirate of influence and power was formed within each Fallen House. Kells ruled not with calming wisdom, but with quick and spiteful wrath. Under them, the Archons were priests that guided worship to the Servitors and the absent Traveler; working to maintain and safeguard the Ether-making machines. The Servitors were divided into dynasties, with a Prime providing the majority of Ether for their respective Fallen House.

To maintain their superiority, these circles of leaders instituted the practice of docking, in which both the newborn and disgraced had their lower arms removed and prohibited from regeneration. In order to earn the right to ascend, these Dregs would need to prove their loyalty through fanatical service to both the Kell and the Great Machine, quickly producing lesser factions within the Houses.

After several decades of this self-destructive chaos, an armistice was organized by the Fallen House of Judgement, still seeking to create harmony among their people, despite their crippled numbers after the Whirlwind. They proposed an exodus to reclaim the Great Machine, through which their Golden Age could be reignited. The standing Kells agreed to this, and gathered their Houses onto their Ketches and Skiffs to make the long journey across the stars.

To attain some level of peace, the House of Judgement split its remaining members among the splintered fleets, so that they could advise their Kells during future crises. And so, the Fallen began their voyage of reclamation, loosely following the path of destruction left by the Traveler's hunters; in hopes of finally laying claim once more to their Great Machine. Despite its once hopeful goal, the journey only continued to wear away at Fallen culture, further defacing it with greed, selfishness, and machine-worship. Soon, the Kells and Archons began to lead their people astray, plundering other worlds and races for resources and treasures to "aid" in their quest.

The House of Judgement, in spite of its many efforts, slowly died off as the now nomadic Houses slipped even further into savagery. Some were lost to the doomed raids of foolish leaders, others the whittling of age and disease. Most, however, were silenced by assassination, an act perpetrated by the very Kells they sought to guide.

As the centuries passed, the Fallen ceaselessly followed their Great Machine's trail, degrading in culture and civility with every world they raided.

Meanwhile, the Traveler neared the home of the Nine, fleeing as it did from the Darkness and its Architects. There, it would find a race, one that would far prove more pivotal to the cosmos' fate than any other.


	6. Pawns To Be

VI: Pawns To Be

Humanity, a race of such fragile and curious things.

They had grown to dominance in their native Solar System, becoming of great intrigue to the unseen Nine, who watched them civilize their small yet persistent world; Earth. The handfuls of intriguing astronomical phenomena were no strangers to Humanity, many of whom watched the skies in hopes of finding other life like themselves.

One day, in the twenty-first century of their planetary calendar, they discovered the Traveler, wandering the edge of their Solar System. It drifted between the uninhabitable worlds and moons of their home system, seeding each with life.

At first, Humanity was weary, but that fear quickly melted into wonder. Soon after, that wonder became worship. Millions began praying to the new celestial body, who molded dead planets into paradises; a truly undeniable god.

Amid this widespread social and philosophical upheaval, mankind's leading nations sent three to intercept the pale entity on the bleak landscape of Mars, where it seemingly laid in wait. Armed with their meek ballistic weapons, protecting them from little more than their fear, these three met the false moon.

They stood before the Traveler, and were awed. On that day, on the scarred and parched surface of that red world, it rained.

With this first contact, the Traveler gifted its great slew of knowledge to Humanity, elevating them into a new era; a Golden Age. Lifespans tripled, once crippling diseases were cured, philosophical understandings and scientific study blossomed to new heights. Humanity deciphered how to reach near-light speeds, settling the once inhospitable planets and moons seeded by their holy Traveler.

Upon Mars, the city of Freehold was founded; a booming metropolis raised in lush jungles and gardens. The freezing ice of the moon Titan thawed into a vast ocean of liquid methane, atop which the proud New Pacific Arcology was built. Venus grew into a world of temperate seas and islands, becoming a vacation center for millions. Mercury, once blistering and uninviting, had grown into a vibrant world not unlike Mars, inviting mankind to explore its newfound and untouched caverns. In the earthly recesses of the innermost planet, strange machines were unveiled. Seemingly composed of stone and metal, these devices contained vast troves of heavily-encrypted data. A team of scholars and researchers joined together to decipher these alien machines, founding the Ishtar Collective and its academy on the Mercurian surface.

As this luminous age trudged on, there were some minds who proved to shine brighter than others. Chiefest among them was House Bray, a family of scientists and engineers; dedicated to mankind's continued advancement into the wider universe. In Freehold, Clovis Bray I founded the Clovis Bray Exoscience Corporation, devising experimental technologies to further Humanity's expansion beyond the Solar System. Greatest of them was SIVA, a self-replicating nanotechnology meant to construct colonial settlements in other star systems through harvesting natural resources.

The Golden Age was muddied when an extremist faction of Martian separatists launched a brief yet violent attack on Earth, claiming millions of lives. In the wake of the war, the Earth-born government commissioned the Brays to create a defense system against such conflicts.

Together, the Brays shaped the Warminds, an array of adaptive artificial intelligences who would predict and neutralize threats to Humanity before they manifested. First and greatest of them was Rasputin, upon whom all other Warminds were designed after; lording over all other machines as the prime vanguard of mankind. With a network of devastating orbital and planetside military installations, seamlessly linked by a web of orbiting Warsats throughout the system, the Warminds maintained their watch with vigilance and impunity. Rasputin, dubbed the Tyrant by the machines, began to shape itself, covertly developing advanced contingency strategies to better serve its purpose, unrestricted by human intervention.

As the Brays toiled with their warmachines, the Ishtar Collective discovered a chamber filled with automatons clad in hammered brass, dormant and half-decayed. After several further weeks of study, they uncovered a barely functioning unit, dubbing it Specimen 12. It was found this surviving machine was capable of simulating thousands of possible timelines and realities, perfectly mimicking its human observers. The Ishtar Collective disassembled Specimen 12, fearing its abilities when they began to question their own existence due to its simulations.

Despite its destruction, a fragment of Specimen 12's still operational mind core was smuggled into the hands of the Brays. They peered into the machine's simulations, and saw imperfect images of Darkness. Even to Specimen 12's mind core, with its seemingly flawless recreations, this force was unknowable. Having seen the horror that waited beyond the Solar System, the family dedicated itself to preparing Humanity, modifying and developing new technologies in the laboratories of their Martian facilities. They turned Rasputin's vision away from mankind and to the stars. Its core directive of defending the human race unchanged, the Tyrant continued its vigil, staring deep into the void in wait.

Meanwhile, in order to create a new army for Humanity at large, the Brays began the Exomind Project. While the Warminds had been requested, and a result of post-war fever, building an army would not be so easily permitted by the Earth-born government. Thus, the Brays turned to more duplicitous means of achieving their goal. Quietly collecting death row criminals, the cripplingly indebted, and those who simply seemed best for the task ahead, the Brays amassed several thousand test subjects for their project.

With the power of SIVA, these subjects' bodies and minds were converted from flesh and neurons into metal and circuitry. Soldiers with strength and speed unlike any human; who would not need to eat, drink or sleep. But despite the Bray Corporation's efforts, a crippling flaw appeared in the Exominds' design; in that their human minds rejected the mechanical bodies they inhabited. This degenerative process, Dissociative Exomind Rejection, would eventually result in insanity and later brain death for the subject unless rectified. To correct this issue, Exos were programmed to automatically reboot their consciousnesses after several years, erasing past memories altogether to create a blank slate that didn't recognize its origin as a human being. However, this would only temporarily solve the issue, causing the Brays to implement drives in the Exos' minds such as the urge to eat or reproduce, in order to make their bodies feel more natural to their inherently human brain. Additionally, the Exominds' rebooting sequence was designed to mimic a lucid dream state, so to ease their human minds.

With their army complete, the Brays installed their new units across the inhabited Solar System, touting them as volunteer peacekeepers; with even the Exos themselves reprogrammed to believe their lies. The Exos would stand watch, awaiting the day that the darkness from beyond arrived; to be slaved under Rasputin's personal systems and led into battle by the First Warmind.

As another stage to their plan against destruction, the Brays convinced the Earth-born government to launch the Exodus Project, an effort to colonize the stars. Petitioned as the first major step towards establishing mankind outside its cradle system, the Brays in fact hoped to scatter Humanity across the universe, so that any invaders would be unable to wipe them out in one fell swoop. The Exodus colony ships were built to carry forty thousand who would rotate their crews via cryostasis, all the while assisted by an onboard artificial intelligence. Furthermore,caches of dormant SIVA nanites were stored in the hulls of the ships, unbeknownst to even the Brays. Rasputin had gleaned Exodus Project's true purpose, and had taken steps to safeguard their plan; even going as far as adapting Specimen 12's limited simulation programs into its coding.

Elsie Bray, eldest of the Bray daughters, took to further examining Specimen 12's mind core, aided in secret by Rasputin. After months of slow progress, they stumbled upon a new intelligence deep within the mind core, with Elsie suddenly vanishing days later. Nonetheless, her confused and mourning family pressed onwards with their plans.

While all of Humanity prepared for their great Exodus, the Nine watched with intrigue. The Traveler had power that defied the natural laws of the universe at large. If they could learn to truly comprehend its teachings, they could free themselves from the limitations of their reality and enter the world of normal matter.

But before they could approach the Great Machine, and as the first few colony ships began to leave their home system, disaster struck.

The Traveler, worn by years of flight, had grown complacent in its rest within the Solar System. The peace offered by Humanity's uplifting had relaxed its watch, making it forget to scan the stars for familiar and dreaded black shapes.

Thus, after two centuries of tranquility, the Architects found its safe haven.

They had outpaced the Shapers in their hunt, intent on claiming the victory of the Light's destruction for themselves. Oryx, seeking to feast on the Traveler's Light, challenged the Gardener for the right to besiege Humanity, only to be swiftly, and quietly, denied. The war had been waged this way since time untold, and nothing, not even the word of a King, would change that. The Taken King begrudgingly bent the knee to their command, directing his brood, who remained unaware of the humiliating exchange, to stalk elsewhere in the cosmos for sustenance.

Rasputin, having detected the approach of the dark fleet long ago through deep-space scans, enacted its wide array of defenses along the Solar System's extreme edge. In spite of its best efforts, the Warmind found its weapons could do little to the Architects, with its own advanced simulations only confirming the fact.

Victory, being defending Humanity from this dread fleet, was simply unachievable.

With this realization, the Tyrant initiated the adaptive protocol MIDNIGHT EXIGENT; reconfiguring its intelligence to survive the oncoming calamity. In doing so, it erased its core directive of defending human lives first and foremost. Through waiting out the destruction that approached, Rasputin hoped to salvage what remained of mankind from the ruins.

But to ensure this strategy triumphed, it would need to prevent the Traveler from fleeing.

By using its simulation subroutines, as well as prior inferencing of the Traveler's origin point from deep-space analysis, Rasputin had deduced the Great Machine would likely flee in the face of a major threat. Through a vast and nearly untraceable string of proxy programs, the Tyrant had designed and built several Light-based weapons that would sufficiently stall the Traveler's flight, forcing it to wield its luminous power to defend itself and, by proxy, Humanity.

As collapse drew near, Rasputin enacted this ABHORRENT IMPERATIVE.

In a tide of dark wrath, the Architects carved through the Solar System, laying waste to the arcology of Titan and the Warmind installations across the Jovian moons. The space stations over Titan relayed the chaos to the core, spurring great panic at the alien force that approached. While most of the Exodus colony ships scrambled to launch, those few that had already set sail were swept up in a sea of Darkness.

As the lesser Warminds were destroyed one by one, Rasputin abandoned its central core facility on Mars and retreated to Earth, severing its connections to its hundreds of proxy intelligences.

The Brays, having not predicted the Darkness to arrive so soon, as per the limitations of the Specimen 12 fragment, rushed to activate the Exominds' control protocol under Rasputin, only to realize the Warmind had deserted them for its pyrrhic victory strategy. They too were swept up in the Deep as it engulfed Mars, leeching the raw Light from its lush forests. The Traveler, having been in orbit over Mars at the moment, began its mad dash to escape.

The Great Machine made ready to flee the doomed Solar System, hoping Humanity would cover its flight like so many races before. However, as it passed near Earth, the weapon of Rasputin struck its white hide. That same weapon, in a final effort by the Tyrant, fired on the Architects, only for its Light-born power to be devoured by the dark things. With that, Rasputin scattered its consciousness, burying itself in the Russian Cosmodrome's networks under an indefinite stasis.

As the Last Warmind had planned, the Traveler was stunned by the sudden blow, slowing over the cradle of Humanity. Its pause was brief, a mere stumble, but it was just long enough for the Architects to leap upon it; tearing into its flesh with their claws of Darkness.

So fearful was it of a final annihilation that the Traveler ignored its own teachings of peace, and cast out a desperate pulse of Light. Even the Gardener, who had stepped from his Garden to witness the massacre, was stricken by this scorching display; his body seared and withered. With their source avatar on the brink of death, the Architects retreated.

Having forced the Darkness to flee and lick its grievous wounds, the Traveler entered a depleted state. That depletion was quick to turn into anguish and dismay. In its own near-destruction over Earth, the Traveler, and furthermore the consciousness of the Light, had snapped. It recognized in this moment of weakness that it could not hope for victory through proxies that merely followed its teachings, as it had done before in countless universes past.

It would need to enact a scheme; one unbecoming of the Light and its virtues.

The Darkness could not be defeated at this stage in the game, it had to be broken; shattered utterly and completely. It would need a weapon, a contradiction to the fundamental values of its Shield-Logic. This would not be its first offense. Such thinking had been seen in its manipulation of the Leviathan against the Worm Gods in ages past.

Only now, the stakes had become far more apparent: should its corporeal host be destroyed when the Architects inevitably returned, the Light would die forever.

Thus, it would craft a weapon of violation, one insidious to both Logics alike.

A weapon loyal to Light, but able to bend Darkness to its will. Through this dual power, it would grow and fester like a cyst in the Darkness' pantheon of death, tearing out its Black Garden's roots one by one. And finally, when its strength had grown to that which it required, the weapon, ignorant of its true power, would destroy the Darkness at its source.

Such a weapon would take time to forge, even longer to be refined. The Traveler would require subjects to test its design. The celestial being looked to the shattered and frightened remnants of Humanity. They had nearly been destroyed by the Darkness, and the Great Machine's own great wave of Light had burned away hundreds of millions more. Those few who still remained had not comprehended the great war that transpired before them, and had not understood how their own god had murdered millions to spare itself.

They were terrified, and they were loyal. They were the perfect blank slate.

It tore thousands of those who had died from oblivion, remaking them as ethereal ghosts of their former selves. These agents of its will would seek out the dead who had bathed in the Light of its final display, and reforge them. These undead would stave off the inevitable vultures that sought its flesh; they would hold the line. And with every new life, with every revival, it would further perfect the design of its new weapon; the bearer of its great and luminous dawn.

To collect these warriors into a nexus of power, it spoke to one of these revived souls in his first hours of new life, telling him to create a haven under its shadow. It said it had been wounded nearly beyond repair, and would need him to guide what remained of Humanity with its blessing. As expected, the man was humbled, and vowed to obey. He vowed to speak for the Traveler.

Finally, the Great Machine birthed one final Ghost of its will, tasked like all others with restoring life to one of the dead. But unlike its brothers and sisters, this one would not raise a mere prototype, it would raise the weapon itself. Until that design's completion, this Ghost of the dawn would wander fruitlessly across Earth, its fate protected by the Traveler itself. For now, however, the inevitable dawnbearer would lie in wait, merely another dead thing upon the Earth.

Content with its scheme's integrity, the Traveler entered into a healing stasis. Unbeknownst to the man it had assigned as its voice, it was not adrift in comatose, merely silent in its observation. It would watch as Humanity pulled itself from the brink, and wait for the servants of the Darkness to foolishly assume its weakness and attack without caution.

As it prepared for the long nights ahead, the Traveler was briefly stricken with a sense of irony. Humanity had been a near-fatal distraction from its unending conflict.

Now, they had become its pawns to break the Darkness.


	7. Dead Things

VII: Dead Things

The Earth was cold and half-dead.

The sun had been blotted out by the ash of the Collapse, formed from the dead caught in its many fires and a single blazing Light. Snow coated the land, the surface of the sea chilled, and the sky became clouded and grey.

What remained of Humanity had survived by either hiding in protected bunkers deep beneath the surface, or through simple luck. When these survivors looked upon their ravaged home, despair gripped them in a vice. However, their faith in the Traveler was not lost, for they knew not much of the destruction was its own doing. Hopeful to the end, they organized, traveling in bands and establishing ramshackle villages in the ruins, struggling to gather what was needed to survive the seemingly eternal winter.

Then, from the ceaseless snowstorms came luminous machines, the Ghosts; proclaiming that they had been tasked by Traveler with protecting Humanity. It was a lie.

They were to raise the dead and gone into protectors; not for Humanity, but for their pale creator. These Ghosts scattered across the Earth, each seeking out a victim of the Traveler's counterattack in the Collapse. Some found their chosen in melted buildings, others in collapsed tunnels, or perhaps strewn along a dead field in many pieces. In flashes of mending Light, the Ghosts dragged their chosen dead from oblivion, as instruments of the great war to be waged.

Imbued with the Light's power over the cosmos, these chosen would serve as the Traveler's army against the Darkness, at least until its true weapon's completion. By the Ghosts' healing touch, these chosen were restored to physical prowess, able to shrug off fatal injuries, poisons and diseases in mere moments. They would not age beyond their point of revival, and should they be killed, their Ghosts could restore them to life once more. Their only true weakness lay in the destruction of their Ghost, which would render them mortal irrevocably.

But most importantly, upon their first revival, these new warriors' past memories were stolen away by the Ghosts. Not erased, merely hidden away by their restorers. In this void, it was hoped that the Ghosts would be free to mold these amnesiac undead into tools of death for the Traveler.

However, a fluke appeared in this design, for the Ghosts could not squash the innate conscience of life, even in returning it from death. As a result, the chosen would act on their own accord, forging new identities of their own. The patient Traveler accepted this compromise, for it required a force of loyal believers. It would merely empower those who followed its scheme, knowingly or otherwise, so that they could chaff away the dissidents.

The Traveler had created an army of dead things given life again, true affronts to both Light and Darkness. But for the Great Machine, they would do well. It need only wait.

As more and more began to walk the Earth, these chosen came to encounter more and more remnants of Humanity, both of flesh and metal. To Humanity, these chosen dead became known as the Risen.

In the eyes of the survivors, these Risen became likened unto gods, unable to die and bestowed with great power by the Traveler itself. Such praise stoked hubris and greed in these first Risen, leading them to crave the lands that remained on the wracked Earth; for they were theirs by right.

Ignoring the guiding words of their Ghosts, these Risen grew deluded by their power, becoming thieves and killers. But most dreaded of them were the Warlords, who gathered followings of mortals to their name. They launched violent raids and campaigns against villages, both neutral and led by rival Warlords. Some even called other Risen to their side, forming fellowships, alliances, and armies to lord over greater swathes of territory.

However, not all of these chosen were so keen to seek glory and power, rather they looked for a purpose in the chaotic world they had come to live in. Some sought isolation, so that they could study their wondrous new power in peace. Others took to defending their mortal kin, though these souls were few in number and strength. Many more simply wished to experience what they could in this weakened world, exploring the ruins of the civilization they had once been a part of.

In spite of their differences, all Risen, be they Warlord, hermit, vanguard or adventurer, valued the gift of their Light and the mysterious Traveler it came from. They valued what it permitted them to do and to achieve.

Except for one.

One man drifted the ravaged Earth, alone save for the Ghost at his side. He had grown to disdain his Light. When the spectre that accompanied him spoke of it as a gift, he saw a curse. He had been pulled from a peaceful death by this Traveler, so that he could serve its divine name.

This man saw the death and pain that surrounded him, how too many of his fellow Risen terrorized Humanity, and was disgusted. It stirred a hatred for the Light's dogma, a hatred for its apparent design of needless pain.

Thus, he ignored his spectral companion's pleas to grow in strength. Instead, the man hid himself among the mortals, masking his Ghost and his Light; the former under duress. He would live a simple life, one unobstructed by dogma and eternal life.

As the Warlords raged against each other and the innocents caught in between, the first century after the Collapse drew to a close. This Long Winter continued inexorably; its grey-white clouds giving spare few glimpses of the stars beyond. Stars that hid those who had yet to be awoken.


	8. Awakening

VIII: Awakening

The Collapse had birthed many things. Chilling cold, sorrow, and undying warriors. But there were other things born of this calamity, things not intended to exist.

Amid the Collapse, _Yang Liwei_, one of the first Exodus Project vessels to launch prior to the disaster, had been swept up in the Deep's black tide. It and its forty thousand occupants had been meant to journey beyond Humanity's cradle, to spread their people's influence across the stars. Instead, the Darkness chose to seize this ship, dragging it back to their blue and green world.

It wished for these hopeful souls to watch the death of their civilization, to feel true sorrow as they were torn apart in the final moments of the Light.

But the Great Light changed that scheme.

In this moment, when Light crashed against Darkness, the old truth was briefly restored. The forgotten power struck a hole in space and time; a kugelblitz that swallowed the _Yang Liwei_ and its crew whole, before sputtering and fading under the crushing force of the Logics.

Within this new invisible singularity, the forty thousand colonists were reborn as formless consciousnesses of infinite potential; a legion of gods waiting to be born in an infant world.

First to awaken was Mara Sov.

Through her godly nature, she saw the chaos she had been born from, and what awaited her people in the future. She saw the great and crushing Darkness, how it had swallowed everything in her past life, and felt terror. The formless woman saw how a thing, a King of Shapes, would destroy her ancestral home; how he would then journey to her new realm and do the same. Mara, horrified by this vision, turned her eyes away, but in doing so failed to see the horror of Light. She did not glean how the Light would destroy her new home all the same, not through anarchical death, but through tyrannical undeath. Ignorant of the Light's own skewed goals, Mara Sov determined her people would serve to protect the Sky, so that they would not drown in the black Deep.

Disturbed by the untapped clairvoyance and potential that she possessed, which upon awakening her people would also own, Mara Sov reached a dreadful conclusion. She determined true gods would not know true life, which would prevent them from seeing any purpose in assisting another realm beyond their own. Thus, the First Awoken decreed her people would not wield the power of omnipotence, that they would be capable of feeling pain and fearing the end. They would not know the ailing touch of old age, but they would never know true immortality.

The woman chose to destroy the gods before they could arise.

Second to awaken was Alis Li, whom Mara manipulated with false thoughts to shape their new world to her godless design. Alis Li denied their new people omnipotence in this realm, becoming an unknowing safeguard for the eventual outcry against Mara's secret choice.

As the remaining colonists began to form in the new world, they declared their home the Distributary and themselves the Awoken. Since the men's numbers were small, the women were appointed to protect them, forming a matriarchy upon which Alis Li was crowned Queen of the Awoken.

The Queen, who by Mara's hidden will remembered her past existence, as did eight hundred and ninety-one others, proclaimed that the Awoken would continue their original human mission of perfecting themselves. And so, the Awoken dedicated their lives to furthering their technology and culture, to make it so none of their number would know hunger or death. To grasp their reality, Queen Li created the order of Eccaleists, who would study every fragment of their world to understand its meaning. Lastly, Queen Li declared that no secrets would be held by anyone; a proclamation that Mara Sov quietly ignored.

After years of rule, the First Awoken led the leading Eccaleist, the Diasyrm, to look further into the public records of Alis Li. In it, she found evidence of Alis Li's acts in shaping their realm around mortality. Enraged, the Diasyrm accused Queen Li of deicide, believing that the Awoken had been cheated out of immortality. This sparked the Theodicy War, in which the Diasyrm waged against the Queen for her apparent crime, resulting in the deaths of several thousand Awoken.

Playing the moderate, the First Awoken sent her faithful brother and caring mother, Uldren and Osana Sov, to speak altered truths to the Diasyrm and her Eccaleists. Osana convinced the Diasyrm to disappear into hiding, riddled with guilt by the death on her hands. Uldren spoke to the Eccaleists, telling them of how the Awoken had been utterly shapeless and would not have been able to assume their rumored godly nature. The Eccaleists accepted this truth, preaching that their people were meant to live in their Distributary for some past action. The war drew to a close, and Alis Li, worn by the chaos her once pure vision had spawned, abdicated as Queen soon after.

Her replacement, Nyuga Pin, allowed the Queen's power to falter, investing influence into the hands of the Gensym Scribes, scholars who rose to replace the Eccaleist's former station. A woman approached these scholars, a soldier once loyal to the Diasyrm in the long-past war. She declared that Mara Sov had slain the ousted preacher in secret, and challenged her to a trial by combat. Uldren served as Mara Sov's champion, fighting the warrior to a tie through three matches. The warrior, Sjur Eido, humbled herself before Mara Sov, who chose to accept her as a confidante rather than kill her.

Many years later, the Awoken people had grown increasingly wary of their place in the universe, thanks to the distant Theodicy War and the words of the Eccaleists since. All was as intended by Mara Sov, the First Liar, who had molded her people's history to instill uncertainty in a chosen few's hearts and minds. She called out to the Awoken people, asking them to join her in a mass emigration to the world of their ancestry. Tens of thousands accepted this invitation, millions more chose to remain behind. Backed by a disheartened and disgusted Alis Li, whom merely sought to rid her world of its First Liar, Mara Sov commissioned the construction of the Hulls, great vessels that pierced the walls separating the Distributary and their former universe, allowing her followers to step into their old home.

While the Hulls had been torn and sundered by this second transition between realities, the Awoken colonists had persevered. Having returned to their Solar System, they settled the Asteroid Belt, inhabiting the empty carcasses of colony ships laid to ruin in the Collapse. Naming this place the Reef, Mara Sov began analyzing the slowly reorganizing humans on their cold world, forming a council of her closest allies.

But while she called for restraint, at least for the moment, many defied her word. These rebels, striving to help mend their ancestors, fled from the Reef and to the Earth. With them, they took medicines and technologies lost to the past destruction. Despite Mara Sov's attempts to ease tensions, those of the Reef saw these emigrators as traitors, naming themselves the true Reefborn, versus their weak-willed and disobedient Earthborn siblings.

When the Earthborn Awoken returned to their earthly birthplace, many were seen as both awe-inspiring and terrifying aliens. Some were accepted as new allies and friends, others were slain in xenophobia. Handfuls of those killed were restored to life by wandering Ghosts, who were intrigued by their odd Lights. Despite difficulties, the Earthborn integrated into Humanity, working to rebuild their forebears' world and society with what little they had.

Mara Sov accepted their choice, and set her people on building the Reef into a truly adequate home. Already, she could feel Darkness drawing closer. She had so little time to work.


	9. Machinations

IX: Machinations

Unknown to the denizens of Earth and the newly-founded Reef, the Solar System would grow to become infested with the hives of alien beings.

The machines on Mercury, once of mere study by the Ishtar Collective and the Brays, began to stir once more. The Vex, persistent in their mysterious goal, appeared on the planet in hordes. In a matter of days, the garden world, scarred by the Architects' assault, was little more than a machine. As its calm lavender oceans were swapped with seas and rivers of white radiolarian cells, great drills bore into the planet's core, excavating its innards to be replaced with stone-metal and radiolaria waterfalls. In this newly-tilled earth, seeds for a forest were planted; one that would peer through the possibilities of reality far and wide. Meanwhile, on the planet's now mechanical surface, a vault's glass foundations were laid.

As the Vex toiled in secret, indifferent to the events surrounding them, a King began harboring thoughts of rebellion.

In being denied his feast by the Architects, Oryx had been spared the infernal burn of the Great Light. Nonetheless, he had felt shudders through the binding Darkness, shudders of weakness. He searched for the Architects, finding their dark fleet nestled in the black edge of their ancient birth.

In finding them quiet and huddled in this vacant corner of reality, Oryx discerned their vulnerability. The Gardener had been mutilated by the Light, so gravely that only the Light's own healing touch could hope to mend his wounds. Sensing that the Traveler, and by extension its bottomless stores of Light, had entered into a restorative stasis, the Architects had done the same. They sought to await the Traveler's return, however long it took, so that they could heal the Darkness' prime avatar. And when this task was complete, they would destroy the traitorous Great Machine, permanently smothering the Light in the Deep's black depths.

This realization sparked dissent in Oryx's mind. The Architects had been repulsed by the Traveler's last desperate attack, a failure that proved their inherent weakness. In his three eyes, the Architects had proven they could not weather the storm of existence. His faith, the Sword-Logic as described to him by the Darkness itself, cried out to him; for only the strong and cunning could survive. Oryx would not see this philosophy tainted by anyone, even by those who had taught him it.

Thus, the Taken King dispatched his faithful son, Crota the Hope-Eater, to the Solar System. Through him, Oryx would monitor the Great Machine's recovery, and when its Light began to glow once more, he would strike before the Architects, and cull the Light as the Sword-Logic demanded. He would feast on death, and become truly synonymous with it, as he had long wished to be.

Crota arrived on the Moon of Earth, masking his brood's arrival as a vast shower of asteroids striking the lunar surface. The son burrowed deep into the grey celestial body, forging it into a war-moon; after the ones used by his father and aunts in their own death-forging fleets. Within winding tunnels of chitin-covered rock, Crota spread his sect throughout the new caverns and tunnels to build armories, spawn-pits, and arenas. Inspired by his father's Dreadnaught, which was both ship and Ascendant Realm, Crota buried his sword in the Moon's core, drowning it in a black abyss. He forged a gateway in this dark pit, one that would lead to his own Ascendant Realm; in which his mighty Oversoul cast the green-black glow of his soulfire. From this lunar bastion, the god-prince's swarms would watch Humanity's recovery, all while embarking on campaigns in galaxies beyond to sate the gnawing hunger of their Worms.

All of these horrid preparations went unnoticed by Humanity and the Awoken of Earth, who had just passed into the second century of their Long Winter. But on the edge of the Solar System, seen by only the Reefborn Awoken, a fleet of arachnid nomads had arrived. They pillaged the ruins of Humanity's once great civilization across the Jovian moons, struggling to understand technology that had once been their own in complexity. But as they peered deeper into the broken star system, the Fallen laid eyes upon their lost god. Finally, the Great Machine was within their grasp.


	10. Founding

X: Founding

In the cold embrace of the Old Russian wilderness, Warlords fought for control over the lands; followed by hundreds of Risen and thousands of mortals swore to them by fiefdom. Many, both Risen and mortals, had grown disgusted by the Warlords' tyranny, though fear of punishment held their tongues. Those who could fled into the chilling wastes, where none dared not follow.

Nine of such deserters would come to meet in ravine amid a frigid storm. Rather than slay one another and their Ghosts, they gathered together to brave the cold, sharing their stories of the Warlords they had served under. Guilt for the world they had helped shape seized them, and a somberness overtook the meager camp they had created. One of them, a great swordsman by the name Radegast, proposed they end the tyranny that gripped the Earth and her people. The others agreed to this, and so they forged a fellowship to tear down would-be kings.

At first, their strikes were merely disruptive, stealing tithings to the Warlords so that they could be returned to the people. But over the ensuing decade, the rumors of these defiant warriors spurred others to join their ranks, both mortal and Risen. Two hundred and ten years after the dreaded Collapse, this blossoming rebellion struck against one of the Warlords, toppling his armies and reign in a single day. Having proven their fortitude and intent, hundreds more abandoned their despotic lords and joined the fellowship. Now hundreds strong, these emancipators became renowned for their unbreakable will and determination. And so, they became known as the Iron Lords.

For the next twenty years, the Iron Lords, followed by their hundreds of loyal Iron Wolves, fought across Old Russia to eradicate the Warlords. Some battles ended with little to no bloodshed, as the Warlord's soldiers surrendered or defected. Others ravaged entire towns, with innocents often being caught in the crossfire as the armies clashed. Some Warlords, either seeing the Iron Lords' cause as just or simply seeking to escape death by their hands, fell in with the warriors and joined their ranks. The most famous of these additions were Felwinter, the quiet holder of a mountain fortress which became the Iron Lords' base of operations; and Shaxx, a proud and boisterous fighter who wished to revel in battle.

After two decades of war, the Iron Lords had largely secured Old Russia under their banner, with the few Risen loyalists of the Warlords ultimately outmatched to oppose them. From their Iron Temple atop Felwinter's Peak, the Iron Lords declared the people across Old Russia and the grander world would never again go threatened by corrupt Risen. Rejoice was heard at their words.

A month after, however, the Iron Lords and their Ghosts found themselves drawn to the west by a strange enlivening pull. The nine reformers, with trusted Felwinter in tow, journeyed to a vast mountain range; cloaked in a persistent storm of fog and rain. The storm parted, bidding them passage into a lush and forested valley, something unseen outside the tempest's walls. Trekking further inward, they found the Traveler, whose name had drifted nearly into fable; one known only by the Risen through the words of their Ghosts.

In its shadow, they found a man preaching and caring for a small camp; another Risen like themselves. He claimed to speak for the Traveler, for it had spoken to him in his first hours of new life. He proclaimed that it had told him to build a haven in its shadow, a place of safety for all who would travel there.

The Iron Lords saw the Speaker's claims and goals as true, finding a humbling feeling towards the great white orb above them. They called the people of Old Russia and beyond to this safe and bountiful land. Thousands from across the world answered their call, hundreds of whom being Risen drawn by the same Light as them.

In a mere year, the once miniscule village had grown into a city of hope. But mere hope proved it could not hold together the people of this city. Factions of both political and ideological bearings, inspired by remnants of the Golden Age's philosophies, governments, and technology, began competing for dominance over the city. As the Iron Lords were on campaign in Old Asia and the Saharan Deserted Zone, these Factions fell into violent infighting, rallying bands of Risen to their causes; in defiance of the old fellowship's decrees against unequal dominion. The Faction Wars engulfed the city, driving its mortal populace to pick sides in order to ensure their safety.

The Speaker, distraught over the civil war, pleaded to the neutral Risen to end the conflict. Loyal to his word, an alliance of Risen, led by the rising hero Rezyl Azzir, banded together and challenged the Factions. Through both battle and debate, these pure-hearted Risen quelled the infighting and stabilized the city, and not a moment too soon.

Mere days after suppressing the last of the extremist Faction leaders, the Earth came under siege from scavengers cloaked in red cloth. While their brothers and sisters had become content to scrounge the outer reaches of the Solar System for a while longer, the Fallen House of Devils had possessed no such patience. Instead, they had pressed further into the system and found their lost god. And so, the House of Devils had arrived on Earth, intent on reclaiming the Great Machine for themselves. Stories of these brutal pirates and thieves spread across the Earth in little time, speaking of how they ravaged villages and towns to fuel their Servitors.

In response to both the Faction Wars and the new Fallen threat, the Speaker petitioned the creation of an official government to rule over the city. The Iron Lords, having since returned in the face of the invasion, seconded this idea. No one group would hold more sway than another, preventing future Faction Wars and ensuring the city's continued safety. Thus, the Consensus was formed, comprised of the remaining moderate Factions, the Iron Lords, and the Speaker; who would stand as a spiritual guide and figurehead to lead the newly titled Last Safe City.

Most importantly, it was seen that the Risen were the City's best chance at survival; that they could not persist with a code of ethics that permitted the likes of the Warlords and Faction Wars to occur. So, the Risen of the Last City were named Guardians, paragons who would live and die to safeguard Humanity.

To manage the City's protection and humankind's recovery, three divisions of these Guardians were created, founded on the habits and practices created by Risen in the early centuries of the Long Winter. They were the City Guard, who would prepare the City's defenses against foes within and without; the Order of Refractions, who would study the bizarre and awesome power of the Light; and the City Expedition Force, who were to scour the Earth, and in time the worlds beyond, to seek out looming threats and lost secrets. To lead these divisions, the triumvirate known as the Vanguard was founded, whose members would find themselves added to the Consensus as tactical military and information advisors.

With these first foundations in place, the Last City stood ready against the alien threat from beyond, whose blue eyes carried an eager and fanatical glow.


	11. Heroes, Villains, and Prophecies

XI: Heroes, Villains, and Prophecies

Earth, though it had begun to thaw and reclaim the vibrancy of life, was still a dangerous place. The Fallen House of Devils, driven by their depraved machine worship, pillaged its lands to feed their pantheon of Servitors.

Rather than spread their forces too thin, the Consensus opted for Humanity to shift into a defensive strategy, ordering the construction of six massive walls to line the Last City's borders. The building of these Walls took four years to complete, a process only completed with the assistance of the Guardians. During this period, the Iron Lords attained greater legend in their seemingly invincible patrols, holding the line against the House of Devils' attempted incursions. As bases of operation for the growing city's defenses, eight great Tower were constructed along the Walls themselves; one for each of the cardinal and intercardinal directions. From these tall bastions, the three Guardian divisions and mortal members of the City Guard would watch the horizons and mountain peaks for invaders.

No sooner had the Walls been completed that the House of Devils slipped past the Iron Lords' patrols, and laid siege to the Last City. For two gruelling days, Guardians and City Guardsmen alike fought against nearly two thousand Fallen, clashing along the six Walls. When the Southern Wall threatened to buckle under the weight of the Devils' furious assault, the former Warlord Shaxx rallied the Guardians to hold the line, defying the orders of Iron Lord Saladin Forge to retreat. This brave stand allowed the Guardians to regroup and repel the House of Devils, winning the day for the Last City.

However, the Battle of Six Fronts had not been won without sacrifice, as several hundred mortal City Guardsmen had been slain. Furthermore, the Order of Refractions' Vanguard had been lost in the battle, demanding a new leader be chosen to replace them. Saint-14, City Guard Vanguard and beloved by the people, nominated the adept warrior and thinker Osiris to succeed the empty position. The Speaker, having taken to Saint-14 as an adoptive father, accepted the proposal, elevating Osiris to the Vanguard and Consensus.

Meanwhile, the Reef had become increasingly chaotic with the arrival of the Fallen. The Reefborn Awoken struggled to repel the Fallen House of Wolves, who had begun encroaching into their purple-misted territories in search of salvage. Despite Mara Sov's efforts, the Fallen rooted themselves in the Reef, forming splintered enclaves in the husks of ruined vessels and strewn-together asteroids.

During these struggles, Mara Sov encountered the Nine through their emissary Xûr; an ultimately failed experiment in their efforts to create bright matter life from within their dark matter world. Seeing her interests aligned with their own, the Nine gifted the Harbingers, living weapons of similar origin to Xûr, to the Queen, so that she may defend her people and the Traveler.

Among the Fallen, the news of the Devils' discovery had begun to spread, driving the scavengers to press further into the Solar System. The Houses of Kings and Wolves organized a plan to seize the Great Machine back for their people, an alliance to take back their god through overwhelming strength in numbers.

As the Fallen moved to reclaim their Great Machine, Rezyl Azzir, proud hero of the Faction Wars and the Battle of Six Fronts, became plagued by nightmares of teeth and perfect dark shapes. A voice in an alien tongue called to him from the Moon, filling his indomitable will with terror and uncertainty. In secret, Rezyl journeyed to the lunar satellite, where the voice drew him to the incomplete Temple of Crota. There, he met the Shaper Witch, Xyor the Unwed, who spoke to Azzir of his coming fall, of how he would be an envoy of Darkness to poison Humanity from within. The fearing man denied her dark prophecy, pressing deeper into the grim Hellmouth to find its Worlds' Grave. He read from its bleak texts of death and Darkness, and with this knowledge killed a Shaper Knight, grafting its chitin to his prized revolver. Unknown to Rezyl, he had been trapped by Xyor, tricked into reading infectious words in exchange for understanding their power.

Upon his return to Earth, Rezyl Azzir was changed. The viral language of the Shapers, a black and terrible thing, had infected his mind, morphing his will and Light to their design. His once proud and uplifting persona became muted and distant. Weeks later, in the sole company of his Ghost in the Saharan Deserted Zone, he cast off his old identity and adopted the name Dredgen Yor, one taken from the Shaper language itself. He abandoned his Ghost and became a wraith of death, driven by ancient words of sorrow.

While Dredgen Yor quietly carved away at settlements on the other side of the world, the Last City had become embroiled in a new crisis. Osiris, despite his position as Vanguard Commander, had busied himself with the study of salvaged Golden Age technology and archives. Through these studies, he and his fiery apprentice Ikora Rey discovered remnants of the Ishtar Collective's research, and, more importantly, their records of the ancient Vex.

He had traveled to the withered jungles of Mars in his personal jumpship, recovering the remains of Specimen 12's mind core. Using its still-functioning link to the greater Vex network, Osiris gazed into their collective mind, seeing fragments of their goal and the future. The experience drove him to abandon his responsibilities as a Vanguard, writing several tomes cryptically detailing his visions of events yet to come. Known as the Prophecies by their readers, these abstruse theses also called into question the sanctity of the Traveler and its Light, stirring unrest and uncertainty in the Last City. The Speaker, perceiving Osiris' actions as a direct threat to the Last City's unity under the Traveler, sentenced the Vanguard member to exile. When Osiris turned to Ikora Rey for support, she refused him, claiming that the Last City came first above all else.

Osiris, enraged by the blindness of his comrades, accepted his exile, traveling with haste to Mercury to study and combat the Vex on his own. Surprisingly, nearly three hundred mortals and Guardians combined chose to follow the outcast off-world, believing in his Prophecies. Furthermore, a new group of theorists arose within the Last City's underground, directly inspired by Osiris' words prior to his expulsion. Calling themselves the Future War Cult, this organization sought to continue examining the future as Osiris had; using the Specimen 12 mind core, which they had stolen in secret from the man, to fuel their research.

The timing for such unrest, and the loss of one hundred Guardians, could not have proven worse. No more than a week later, with an entire division of the Last City's defenders still in disarray from their leader's exile, the Fallen launched their unified assault on the Last City. The Houses of Devils, Kings, and Winter fell upon the City in their Ketches and Skiffs, deploying Spider Tanks across its surrounding mountain peaks to pelt the Walls and their Towers. In the Reef, Mara Sov chose to intervene on Humanity's behalf. Taking a fleet of salvaged ships, she led her people to halt the House of Wolves' fleet over Mars, preventing them from bolstering their kin in their assault on Earth.

Without their co-conspirators, the Kings were unable to direct the other Houses in the battle, allowing the Guardians to press deep into their territory. The two sides met in a bloody finale at the rusted mountain base known as Twilight Gap, at which the Fallen had placed their most powerful artillery, as well as the House of Winter's last remaining Ketch. When a breach appeared in the Northeastern Wall, most of the Guardian forces were forced to retreat in order to bolster its defenses. The Iron Lords and their Wolves held the line at Twilight Gap until their allies returned. In a final push, the Guardians shattered the artillery cannons and broke the siege, and the Last City cried in triumph.


	12. Triumphs and Disasters

XII: Triumphs and Disasters

The Great Siege and the Battle of Twilight Gap, while victories for Humanity, had been bloodbaths. Seven of their fabled Iron Lords had been spent in their brave stand, leaving only Saladin Forge, Jolder, and their shared pupil Efrideet to lead the Iron Wolves. To commemorate the Guardians and Iron Lords who had fallen, weaponsmith Feizel Crux forged their armor into the Gjallarhorn, a ceremonial reminder of their power and leadership in the Long Winter.

Unlike Humanity, who stood proud despite their tragedies, the Fallen scattered. While the Houses of Winter and Kings fled to the Reef, where they could pillage the Reefborn and their fellow Fallen free from Humanity's reach, the House of Devils chose to remain on Earth, driven to seize their machine god by any means. Saint-14, aiming to prevent any future incursions by the Fallen on the Last City, led the Firebreak Campaign to push back the persistent Devils; reclaiming several miles of territory for the City. In the end, he slew the Devil Kell Solkis with a mighty headbutt, placing the Devils in disarray as their members fought over the right to ascension.

Finding himself responsible for the chaos that had nearly split the Last City, as he had recommended Osiris to become a Vanguard, Saint-14 announced his plans to journey in search of the exiled prophet; so to mend the fracture and return him to the City's embrace. In his place as Vanguard, he nominated Zavala, an Awoken of stern and stalwart character.

In the Reef and over lush Mars, Mara Sov's intervention had left her people embroiled in war against thee House of Wolves. For four years after Twilight Gap, the two factions battled, until Queen Sov, as named by her people, unleashed the Harbingers on Ceres, annihilating both the moon and the Wolves' stronghold on it. Challenging the Wolf Kell to single combat, she defeated them, her victory earning leadership over the House at large. With the Reef War over, and the Wolves bending the knee to her will, Mara Sov set about furthering her plans in destroying the dark King of her age-old vision.

This scheme would see itself hastened, as the late-arriving Ahamkara slithered and crawled and flew into the Solar System, hunting the Light-born prey they had grown accustomed to feeding upon. They set themselves on Earth, appearing as great and many-fanged drakes to Humanity, granting wishes to mortals and Guardians alike; devouring them in good time. After months of such incidents, the Consensus deemed these creatures too dangerous to persist and order their extermination, beginning the Great Ahamkara Hunt.

The Guardians slew the Ahamkara in droves, who fled to the calm tropical islands of Venus; to be chased by newly built fleets of jumpships and transports. Despite their intentions, the Guardians made foolish wishes to the Ahamkara, who were overwhelmed by the magnitude of their desires. Driven into frenzies by the bountiful cravings, the wish-dragons reduced Venus to a blasted and barren world; a near-copy of its image before the Traveler's terraforming. The Guardians proved unable to combat these hysteric beasts, whose tongues lashed cuts in reality, and in this moment Mara Sov offered them weapons that could pierce their shapeshifter hides. With these weapons, the Guardians slew the Ahamkara and took their bones for study, returning their new tools to Mara Sov as per their bargain.

Thus, Mara Sov had set herself in a seat of power, as she now held the only living Ahamkara; a newborn sought out and delivered to her by loyal Uldren. With its abilities, she had forged the dragon-slaying weapons, so to monopolize her influence over wishes and dreams. The First Awoken used the beast, whom dubbed herself the Riven of a Thousand Voices, to drag the fragment of an alien world into the deep core of Reef, and to build a great and gleaming city atop it. Within this city, the Queen and her Techeuns, witches who had been tasked with studying the arcane forces of the universe, would decipher a means of challenging the Darkness. Having perceived the Ascendant Plane and its realms during her brief omnipotence within the Distributary, Mara Sov created Eleusinia, a bootstrapped Ascendant Realm forged through dragon wishes rather than death. From there, she would lay in wait, watching Humanity with careful eyes to enact her plan.

Humanity, having triumphed in the extinction numerous times, was filled with pride and courage. Many called for their legions of Guardians to set forth and retake the Solar System that had once been theirs. As they celebrated, the Vanguard worked to close loose ends and access new threats. While not public, the Vanguard had invested a great deal into hunting down Dredgen Yor, keeping his identity as Rezyl Azzir secret to prevent crushing demoralization among the people. The investigations of Ikora Rey's intelligence agents, the Hidden, had revealed his grisly tally: over eight hundred mortals and twenty-eight Guardians in just two decades. The trail of death had ended mere days after the Battle of Twilight Gap, stopped by the booming gunshots of Shin Malphur, a stray Guardian who had chased the man for years. Being transported to the Last City for questioning, Shin was questioned on Yor's nature. His words and their own studies pointed the Vanguard's gaze to the Moon, who shone quiet and unassuming the night sky above.

As this realization came, a Shaper scouting party, sent by Crota to more closely observe the Traveler's condition, was discovered and engaged by Guardian scout forces at the Battle of Burning Lake. Though hard-fought, the fifty Guardians that were dispatched successfully slew the thirty Shapers, tracing their origins directly to the Moon. With the link between Yor's fall and the arrival of this new enemy established, the Consensus commissioned a preemptive invasion to liberate the lunar satellite. Shaxx, having studied the weapons of the Shapers slain at Burning Lake, loudly cautioned against the attack, stating time was needed to understand this new enemy and their weapons. The former Warlord's pleas fell on deaf ears, and the campaign proceeded.

Six hundred Guardians departed for the Moon, the fire of bravery in each of their hearts. When their ships returned a day later, only fifty-three souls stepped from the vessels, each in shambles and stammering with fear.

The survivors spoke of how the Shapers had met them with hordes of claws, blades, and guns, each imbued with a touch that seemed to eat their Light. Despite this, they had forged onward and cleaved through their foes; the proud and famed warrior Wei Ning at the head of the charge. They had nearly pressed into the great pit that was the Hellmouth, only for Crota himself to emerge from its depths. With his sword, he had created a great Crack in the Moon, and slain hundreds of Guardians single-handedly; Wei Ning among them.

The Consensus, shocked by the sudden failure and the overwhelming power of their new foe, declared the Moon a Forbidden Zone to all Guardians and denizens of the Last City, hoping that by non-provocation they could avoid the Shapers' wrath. Crota, himself content with the battle and intent on following his father's decree, withheld from invading the Earth in full force.

However, the fire of vengeance burned in the heart of Eriana-3, the surviving lover of Wei Ning, who organized a fireteam of Guardians to defy the Consensus' lunar interdiction and slay Crota themselves. Though valiant, they were decimated, with Eriana being cut down by Crota himself in the Abyss. Only one member of the fireteam, Eris Morn, returned to Earth, forever changed by her experiences in the blinding darkness of the Abyss. Now bearing the three green eyes of a Shaper Acolyte, hatred for the ancient killers festered in her heart, leading her to vanish into parts unknown.

Seeking to makeup for the so-called "Great Disaster" on the Moon and reignite morale in the Last City, the three remaining Iron Lords led their Wolves into the far northern reaches of the Old Russian Cosmodrome, seeking its long-abandoned for technologies to advance Humanity's recovery. Pushing through the blinding snow, they found Site 6, the forgotten production center for the SIVA nanotechnology used throughout the Golden Age. In tampering with Site 6's deep systems to reactivate its replication engine, they released a signal that forcibly reassembled Rasputin's slumbering consciousness from the thousands of damaged servers across the Cosmodrome.

Bewildered and afraid of the intruders in his intended safe haven, the reforming Last Warmind triggered the SIVA nanites within Site 6, only to inadvertently remove their override protocols in his waking stupor. The nanites, now operating exclusively under a protocol of consumption and replication, assailed the Iron Lords and Wolves, infecting their armor and bodies to force them into fighting one another. A dying Lady Jolder sealed the entrance to Site 6 and crippled its replication engine, ensuring the malignant strain of SIVA would not spread beyond its walls.

When the dust settled, only Saladin Forge, Efrideet, and three Iron Wolves remained from the battle. Disgraced, Saladin asked the Consensus to declare the northern regions of the Cosmodrome a Forbidden Zone, so that no one would travel there and risk entering Site 6. The motion was passed, and Saladin placed himself in exile on Felwinter's Peak, where he would watch to ensure no one unearthed SIVA ever again.

The Great Disaster and SIVA Crisis instilled a sense of uncertainty and fear in the hearts of the Last City's people. In time, new ideas on how to approach the era ahead formed, with groups organizing to advocate them. The New Monarchy, a political party inspired by the kings and queens of old, called for political reform, so that Humanity could operate under a unified vision of the future rather than divisive opinions. Another group, the Dead Orbit Movement, claimed Humanity should flee the Solar System altogether to the stars beyond, and began requisitioning a new fleet to carry those who would join them. These groups would see themselves form into new Factions, integrating themselves into the Consensus alongside the secretive Future War Cult.

Shaxx, disgusted by the Great Disaster and the complete lack of preparedness exhibited by the Guardians in the battle, founded the Crucible. In this wargame arena, Guardians would train against one another and hone their skills, so that they may better combat enemies of Humanity in the future. The Crucible, though looked upon by the Vanguard as a resource sink, soon gained an avid fan base among competitive Guardians and onlooking mortals, ensuring its continued presence.

In response to the failed lunar campaign, the Vanguard shifted Humanity's military to a defensive stance once more, preferring to watch its enemies and strike only when concrete threats had assembled. When the City Expedition Force Vanguard Andal Brask was killed by a Fallen mercenary under the employ of the Devils, his position was succeeded by his friend Cayde-6; a carefree Guardian who quickly grew bored with his post. This direct strike against the Vanguard further spurred defensive tactics, with even the once proudly explorative City Expedition Force being confined to limited patrols of the Eurasian regions. Such a sudden retreat allowed the House of Devils to begin organizing once more, with regions once regularly patrolled by the Guardians becoming completely open for the scavengers to exploit in their campaign to reclaim the Great Machine.

For forty years, the Last City remained in its reclusive state, avoiding contact with the far-off Reef and only striking against Devils who strayed too near into their borders. Stories of the devoted Devils' slow encroachment on the City Walls circled, spreading silent terror in the populace.

However, there was a hope for Humanity despite this decline.

Centuries of slow restoration had restored its power, once lost in the fateful Great Light. The chaos throughout the Solar System had created enough death to fuel its weapon's disruptive fire. Its past knowledge as an Architect afforded an understanding of the Darkness' destructive laws, and thus how to break them.

Three hundred and eighty years after the Collapse, the Traveler's weapon was complete.

And so, it unleashed the reins on its chosen Ghost of Dawn, and set him loose upon the Earth. He would find a dead thing and drag them from death as a new being.

They would become the Traveler's dreadful weapon of hope and sorrow. They would become the Dawnbearer.


	13. A New Light

XIII: A New Light

For over three centuries, he had searched, driven by the task given to him by his creator. For over three centuries, he had failed. In his endless quest across Earth, he had seen the cold chaos of the Long Winter, seen the Fallen descend in their weathered ships, and heard the whispers of a Last Safe City where Humanity gathered. He had meant to journey there, to find a haven in which to rest, only for the House of Devils to halt his path through Old Europe.

The Ghost had been hunted for decades by these fanatics, but they had never claimed him, for the Traveler's grace protected its dutiful servant; making him invisible to the eye or bending electrifying bolts around his small form. This was all so that the Great Machine could complete the forging of its secret weapon, a fusion of death and life reviled even by it. By its own hand, it had suppressed the Ghost's perception, making him blind to the dead he could gift with his Light until the weapon's completion. With that same hand, it had made him blind to the power he would be bestowing, so that he would merely believe it standard to the pure Light he bore.

Now, that terrible weapon had been completed. Thus, he was permitted to see the dead. And in these first moments, he found a corpse that beckoned him. In the winding forests of the European Dead Zone, farwest of the Last City and its sheltering mountains, the Ghost had found his Chosen. With a flash of rejuvenating Light, the Ghost rebuilt their body from dust. As with all Chosen like them, they were a new being in an older one's flesh, without any memory of their past life. But this Chosen was different, as was by the Light's design. They were a weapon, the Traveler's perfect fool; one who would break the Darkness and shower the cosmos in unending life.

They were confused at first, shaken and bewildered by the small machine that had restored them, who explained they were meant to serve the benevolent Traveler. This Chosen found themselves hounded by the House of Devils, who knew the dangers that any Guardian posed to them. The new being fled deeper into the European Dead Zone, hiding in its evergreen forests and flowing creeks.

Breaking away from their Fallen pursuers, the Chosen met a mortal woman along the shore of a lake, albeit under the watch of a loaded rifle. Proving their peaceful intent, the Chosen was offered food and shelter by the woman. The mortal woman, revealing her name to be Suraya Hawthorne, explained that she was the leader of a band of some thirty-seven refugees, all of whom had made the long pilgrimage up from the ruins of Old Africa to reach the rumored Last City further east. In reaching Old Europe, they had found themselves stranded by the House of Devils' patrols, unable to combat their superior weapons and numbers.

Bartering to help her hunt for supplies and defend the survivors in exchange for further shelter, the Chosen was escorted to the ruins of a town known as Trostland, where the refugees had established a settlement. The Chosen would remain there for weeks, working with the group to divert Fallen patrols from their tiny safe haven, all while growing fond of them. Out of caution, however, they kept their nature as an immortal hidden, being unsure of how the people would react.

However, after weeks of careful secrecy, a stray Fallen patrol stumbled upon the town. In saving one of the townsfolk, Suraya's mentor Devrim Kay, the Chosen was killed, forcing their Ghost to resurrect them in view of the refugees. After explaining their nature, the Chosen earned the favor of the townspeople, citing the stories they had heard of virtuous Guardians.

Galvanized by the supposed power of her companion, Suraya directed the Chosen to personally disrupt Fallen activity in the region, in the hope of forcing the aliens from the area and allowing the group to continue toward the Last City. The Chosen reluctantly agreed to the task, attacking the Devils' stockpiles of Ether and scavenged materials; stealing what they could to mend Trostland and provide for its people. News of these brazen raids reached the ear of the newly-christened Devil Archon Riksis, overseer of the Devils' operations in the EDZ. Wishing to retake the stolen salvage and claim the head of a Guardian for himself, Riksis laid siege to Trostland in his personal Ketch, leveling the town with its cannons.

The Chosen was buried by the resulting debris, and forced to watch as their companions were cut down. In a fit of rage and desperation, they tapped into the elements around them, releasing a crashing pulse of electrical energy that tore through Riksis' Ketch. Riksis attempted to flee the battle, whom the Chosen chased to the overgrown ruins of a dock. The immortal fatally wounded the ambitious leader, while the Ketch crashed into the waters of the dock. In his moments before death, the Devil Archon spat that the Fallen would reclaim their Great Machine from Humanity no matter the cost. The Guardian retorted with a bullet through his arachnid skull. The Chosen returned to Trostland, finding only six of the original thirty-seven refugees remained, including Suraya and a crippled Devrim.

Unbeknownst to them, Riksis' demise sent shockwaves throughout the House of Devils' rank, with its encompassing Fallen entering a power struggle to fill the sudden vacuum. This chaos was observed by scouts in the City Expedition Force, who reported their findings to the Vanguard. Seeing that no Guardians were actively stationed in the European Dead Zone, the military council deliberated on sending a scout to investigate directly. CEF Vanguard Cayde-6, eager to experience fieldwork again, boldly left on his own aboard a Falcon VTOL craft; against the protests of Ikora Rey and Zavala.

Finding the Chosen and survivors near Riksis' downed Ketch, Cayde-6 returned them to the Last City. Parting ways with the refugees, the Chosen was officially proclaimed a Guardian, and underwent training to better understand their abilities and the immediate history of the City. During this crash-course, they were analyzed by the Order of Refractions for their apparent strength in the Light, having seemingly destroyed a Ketch single-handedly with next to no experience. Their investigators eventually labelled it as nothing more than an uncontrolled burst of raw destructive energy; a common thing among newborn Guardians.

Intercepted Fallen transmissions showed the House of Devils had begun congregating in the southern regions of the Old Russian Cosmodrome. Seeing that such a high-profile target as Riksis had been right under their noses, the Vanguard altered their decades-long defensive stance, sending scouts to observe the Devils' activities. The Guardian, being among those available, was dispatched to the Cosmodrome, armed with City-grade armor and weapons.

Arriving in the rusting spaceport and manufacturing zone, the Chosen happened upon the remains of the Exodus Black, one of the many Exodus Project ships that had been unable to launch in the Collapse. Within its shattered hull, they discovered the craft's still-functioning AI program, whom referred to itself as "Failsafe." Centuries of atrophy had worn on its mind, driving it into paranoid observation of the world around it, even interfacing with a highly-trafficked Fallen communication and data network. By earning Failsafe's trust, the Guardian and their Ghost gained access to this stolen intelligence, discovering the location of a temple dedicated to the Devils' Prime Servitor, Sepiks Prime.

The pair relayed this information to the Vanguard, who, knowing the tactical and religious importance the machine held to the Fallen, dispatched rapid strike teams to attack the lair. Seeing that these teams would arrive too late to face Sepiks, as the machine was due to be moved elsewhere in the coming minutes, the Guardian elected to intercept it alone. In order to more easily bypass the Devils' automated security, the Guardian pulled Failsafe from its worn carcass of a ship, giving "her" new purpose as their onboard assistant. Together, they breached the temple's defenses, fought their way through the Devil forces, and destroyed Sepiks Prime.

The Guardian returned with a hero's welcome to the Last City, being praised as "the Devils' Bane" for their actions in slaying both Riksis and Sepiks. The Vanguard, meanwhile, used the opportunity to move into an offensive posture once more, sending Guardians to directly reclaim portions of the EDZ and Old China from the outlying Devils.

Having lost their core leadership, not to mention main supply of Ether, the House of Devils was crippled and unable to counter Humanity's renewed campaign against them. Desperate for an edge, they scoured Earth's ruins for an edge. This search led the Devil Splicers, a division of Fallen engineers who studied and developed technologies for their House, to the restricted northern region of the Cosmodrome. Quietly slipping past its surveillance perimeter, established by Saladin Forge from perch on Felwinter's Peak, they uncovered and unsealed Site 6, finding the dormant rogue SIVA hive within it. Hacking the facility's deteriorating security protocols, the Devil Splicers quickly learned to produce new SIVA nanites from the replicator, altering its code to become towards Fallen. Aksis, zealous leader of the Splicers, proclaimed SIVA would spark a new age for their people: one in which they would end their dreaded dependence on Ether and thankless worship to the Great Machine.

With SIVA, they would become machine-gods themselves.

The other Splicers rallied behind this vision, augmenting their bodies with SIVA and broadcasting Aksis' message across the Earth to their fellow Devils. Saladin's defenses are easily overwhelmed by the hordes of Fallen that arrived in response. With the chilling winter season in full swing, the growing ranks of the Devil Splicers began using SIVA to morph the Cosmodrome, erecting great towers and infesting the Cosmodrome's perimeter walls with their nanite formations. At the core of their operation, the Splicers created the Perfection Complex, in which Aksis began his journey to apotheosis as the Archon Prime.

Saladin Forge, with the aid of Lady Efrideet and Iron Wolf Shiro-4, recognized the threat that was building in the Cosmodrome, summoning the Guardians of the Last City to Felwinter's Peak; the young Devils' Bane being among them. Detailing the Iron Lords' doomed campaign against Rasputin and SIVA, the Lone Sentry beckoned the warriors to enter the Cosmodrome's newborn Plaguelands and destroy Site 6 outright.

The Devils' Bane patrolled the freezing and infested shipyards of the region, until Failsafe detected a new string of Splicer communication traffic. Using the AI's backdoor connection into the Devils' network, they learned of the Fallen's ongoing siege on a heavily-fortified bunker in the central Plaguelands. Within it was Rasputin, who had fled to the safehouse following the First SIVA Crisis to recuperate. Seeking to capture the ancient AI, the Splicers had constructed and deployed an augmented Shank drone dubbed S.A.B.E.R.-2, built to brute force past Rasputin's still recovering defense protocols, and infect his systems with their obedient strain of SIVA. Despite warnings from Saladin of Rasputin's volatile nature, the Guardian fought their way into the bunker, destroying the invading Splicers and S.A.B.E.R.-2 before they could release SIVA into Rasputin's central processing chamber.

As an apparent show of thanks, the Warmind directed the Guardian to a modified communications array, used by the Splicers to broadcast Aksis' holy message across Earth. The Devils' Bane seized the array, deactivating its broadcast with assistance from Rasputin's override codes. Rasputin, using the retrofitted array, transmitted his intelligence into the Warsat network that still remained in orbit over Earth. From there, he set about eliminating the direct threat of the Devil Splicers, unleashing orbital strikes against their fortresses across the Plaguelands, exposing Site 6 in the process. Saladin, choosing to ignore to Rasputin's past acts against the Iron Lords for the greater good, led the battle against the Splicers who Site 6. While the Iron Lord and his forces fought, the Devils' Bane breached into the inner replication chamber, fighting off a swarm of SIVA nanites as they initiated a meltdown in its core.

With SIVA's source destroyed, the Guardians stormed the Cosmodrome's walls, plunging into the Perfection Complex itself. Within, Aksis had converted himself into a massive four-legged machine, and become fully integrated with the SIVA nanite consciousness and Fallen data network. Saladin, Efrideet, Shiro-4, and the Devils' Bane fought the titan, using their Light and Failsafe's connection to destabilize the remaining SIVA network. After a long battle, they successfully severed Aksis from his SIVA, spurring the nanotechnology to self-destruct and consume the Archon Prime.

With the Second SIVA Crisis over, the House of Devils had been broken, its few remaining clumps preparing to flee the planet aboard their Skiffs and Ketches. Saladin congratulated the assembled Guardians for their service, before sending them once more to the Last City. Meanwhile, Rasputin continued to execute his centuries-old strategy, slowly reestablishing connections to what remained of his proxies and sub-protocols across the Solar System through the Warsat array.

For their exemplary acts in the Second SIVA Crisis, and for recovering the helm of Lady Jolder during their strike against Site 6, the Devils' Bane was dubbed "the Young Wolf" by Saladin. Heralded as a hero of the conflict, the Young Wolf returned to the Last City, eager to serve Humanity and the Light once again.

Just as the Traveler intended.


	14. Power

XIV: Power

With the House of Devils' long campaign against the Last City won, Humanity set its Guardians upon the retreating scavengers, disabling their Ketches as they fled Earth. Eventually, only one battered Ketch and a squadron of Skiffs remained; their crews splintered and weary. The Vanguard dispatched a six-man fireteam, hailing from the City Expedition Force, to follow and observe these scattered remnants, believing the Devils could attempt to rally in the places beyond Humanity's reach.

The fireteam tracked the last Devil Ketch to the purple-misted shores of the Reef, finding it under pursuit by the Reef Guard. Since the Reef War, Queen Sov's hold over the Solar System from the Reef to Jupiter had become unchallengeable. All who sought to enter her wide domain were expected to request passage from the Queen in person. To dodge this custom was to face her army of loyal soldiers and skillful pilots; a fate the Devils had chosen out of both disarray and disrespect to her claim as a Kell. The fireteam, more aware of Reef politics than their quarry, promptly requested passage through Mara Sov's realm. The Queen of the Awoken granted this, seeking to expunge the danger from her drifting kingdom, and assigned the rising and prideful Corsair Petra Venj as her liaison to the Guardians.

Two weeks of hunting the Devil Ketch and its crew ended when the joint Guardian and Reef Guard force discovered the Devils' temporary sanctuary along a flattened asteroid. The Guardian fireteam stormed the Ketch, fighting through its defenses to sabotage the engines, thereby stranding the House remnant to be picked off. In response, the Devils broadcast an all-frequency distress signal, calling for any Fallen to come to their rescue. Petra Venj, fearful that the Devils' transmission might draw forth the neighboring Houses of Winter and Kings, and thus uselessly spend the lives of her own soldiers, issued a bombing run on the Ketch. The attack scattered the vessel into scrap metal, laying waste to not only the Devils but also five of the six Guardians and their Ghosts; leaving the victims permanently deceased. The sole surviving Guardian of this strike fled back to the Last City, spreading the news of the tactical blunder.

Outrage flooded the City's streets, with some of the masses even calling for war with the Reef. To settle the Last City's populace and avoid a needless conflict, Mara Sov and the Consensus brokered a deal. For her direct responsibility in the unnecessary deaths, Petra Venj was stripped of her rank and exiled to the Last City to serve as the Queen's Emissary; an empty title of correspondence. There, she would work to rebuild and maintain relations between Humanity and the Reefborn Awoken, all while surrounded by those she had betrayed. In addition, Mara Sov had her subjects deliver salvaged jumpships and Warmind technology to the Last City, so to hasten Humanity's full return to the stars. While these were adequate sacrifices in the eyes of the Consensus, they were inconsequential to the Queen of the Reef. Her mind laid on grander things, in which offering compensation to Humanity was merely insurance to their success.

In her Dreaming City, the gifted Techeuns had constructed the Wall of Wishes, a machine that translated Mara Sov's spoken wishes into corresponding images. Unable to twist words to her advantage, Riven was forced to simply fulfill these desires, feeding off the miniscule anthem anatheme they provided; rather than indulge in the bounty that was Mara Sov's essence. Using this same Wall, the First Awoken sealed Riven in the towering Keep of Voices at the Dreaming City's core, so that the Ahamkara could never escape and deprive the Queen of her wish-granting abilities. Her asset secured, Mara Sov made greater and grander demands from Riven, each building both the Dreaming City and her own power in strides. Riven, ever the conniving opportunist, found loopholes in even these refined wishes, implanting minor weaknesses throughout the Dreaming City and Eleusinia. Mara Sov and her Techeuns, knowing they could not hope to fully best Riven in a game of serpent-tongued deals, accepted this sabotage, bolstering the weakened points as best they could.

Furthermore, through her alliance with morbidly curious Nine, Mara Sov had gathered ample knowledge of their dark matter realm, though she could not hope to wield its power. But such an alliance bore bitter prices.

With the Traveler in an apparent slumber, the Nine's hopes of entering the bright matter realm had been dashed aside. The past centuries had been spent searching for a new means to conversion, the dark matter beings turning to experimentation through and with their proxies. Their past attempts to create life in Xûr and the Harbingers had been undertaken without a blueprint; without an example with which to compare progress and results. Thus, for their coalition with Queen Sov, they demanded test subjects to deconstruct and study. Though disgusted by their request, Mara Sov provided cadavers of her people to the Nine, only for the dark matter entities to demand the living in a short time. First and only of their choices was Sjur Eido, the Queen's Wrath and lover, for she was of strong body and will. The First Awoken refused to deliver her beloved confidante, only for Sjur to hand herself to the Nine so to maintain their alliance. As weregild, the Nine bid Xûr to present Mara Sov with a pulsing bronze and emerald coin; a symbol of their debt to her.

Mara Sov, stricken with guilt and rage by the loss of Sjur, contemplated cutting ties with the Nine, but chose to hold by her plan. The safety of the Awoken, of the cosmos, required sacrifice, a price she would need to pay regardless of her decisions. In the Nine, she an ally like no other, one would could pierce the veil of space and time to see befores and beyonds. She would hold her course.

In spite of her resolve, Mara Sov knew not how she and the Nine were playing directly into another's luminous hand. The Traveler had hid its restoration from all, cloaking itself from even the invasively observant Nine with its blinding luminance. It watched as its champion, the esteemed Young Wolf, dutifully patrolled the Earth's regions, unaware of their true purpose. For every day that the Traveler recovered from its Great Light, their weapon's control over its twisted Light grew in turn. Its scrying eye sensed a strength much like its champion's growing in the Reef; burrowing itself like a festering, invisible cyst within the Ascendant Plane.

Riven, neither respecting or understanding the Logics; seeing both merely as vehicles to deliver fools for her kind to feed on, had imbued Mara Sov with the same forgotten power that influenced her; the old truth.

In Mara Sov, the Traveler saw a devoted fool, one it could wield to its advantage. In her moment of omnipotence within the Distributary, she failed to see the cosmos in its mixed grey hues, instead splitting it into black and white. She had perceived only the black death of the Darkness, and only the white life of the Light. She had not seen how the Darkness seeded peace and creation through endless death, or how the Light seeded tyranny and agony through endless life.

The First Awoken, with her remorseful will, would serve as an adept pawn. Together with the Traveler's chosen Guardian, she would tear down the Darkness' veil and create an age of Light.


	15. Exiles and Wolves

XV: Exiles and Wolves

While the Reef War had raged, the Wolf Archon Fikrul had preached for the Fallen to abandon their worship of machines, having grown a disdain for the system instituted by the cruel Kells and their Servitor dynasties. While his words would live on, eventually inspiring Aksis and his Devil Splicers to make their own bid at apotheosis with SIVA, Fikrul was outcast from his House and left to die in the ever tumultuous Reef. Even in this exile he was hated, hunted by those who had found pure blasphemy in his words. For years, he hid and fled from these fanatics, cursing his people and their irreversible decline.

In hearing of the Great Disaster that had taken place on the Moon, Fikrul used his weathered ship to travel there, knowing not even his stalkers would dare follow him. Hiding and stealing from the ravenous Shapers to survive, he eventually liberated an ancient volume from the corpse of an Acolyte, drawn by soothing whispers. In reading the tome's words, the former Archon had been infected by the viral language of the Shapers, warping his Ether with Darkness. Emboldened by the dark knowledge he had glimpsed, Fikrul freely called to other Fallen outcasts to his side, proclaiming that with him they would find acceptance. His following blossomed in size, leading to the construction of the stronghold Exile's Haven in the crevices of the Crack forged by Crota's dreadful sword. To rule this House of Exiles, Fikrul appointed his dearest followers as the Scorned Barons, each tasked with maintaining a portion of the Exiles.

Now, two years after Queen Sov's appeasement to the Last City, the Reef had become terrorized by the Exiles. At first, they had menaced nothing more the outlying supply lines and trade posts, like any other roving pirate band that infested the space. But with time, their numbers had begun to attack Awoken colonies, pillaging whatever they could in the process. When the Crows of her brother traced these Fallen to the Moon, Mara Sov dispatched a team of Royal Guardswomen and Fallen Wolves to investigate.

Arriving on the Moon, the Queen's scout force infiltrated Exile's Haven, intent on locating Fikrul and eliminating the mad Archon before his House's attacks escalated further. Upon breaching into Fikrul's throne room, the team came into a stand-off with the Fanatic and his Scorned Barons. But before bullets could take flight, wheels of ambition began turning in the mind of one of the Wolves, a Captain by the name Skolas. In the Reef War, he had been a great conqueror, feared by many. Though he had bent the knee to Mara Sov, to him she was nothing more than a pretender Kell, unworthy of loyalty. And now, he had been given a chance to usurp her, to lead the Fallen towards a new age under his guidance. Thus, he struck down the other scouts in a flurry of blades, and offered to Fikrul an alliance.

He could lead them in tearing down Mara Sov's regime, in order to create a new era for all Fallen, one led by the strong and fearless of their kind; with himself as the mythical Kell of Kells. The Exile Archon accepted this proposal, though plans of deceit laid within it.

Mara Sov, suspecting the scouts had all been killed, focused her efforts on defending the Reef from the House of Exiles, rather than send another investigation. All the while, the Exiles quietly gathered support for their rebellion among the Wolves, wielding Skolas as a willing figurehead of their scheme. In tandem with this, Fikrul stoked Skolas' delusions of grandeur, manipulating the supposed Kell of Kells to further his own plans for the Fallen. He would reshape his people according to his design, not that of a pompous fool who played messiah. When the time came, Skolas would be cast aside as the pawn he was.

But first, well before those distant plans, the Reef needed to experience a new war. Fikrul needed to topple a Queen.


	16. Queen's Wrath

XVI: Queen's Wrath

After months of preparation, the Exiles and Wolves stood ready to launch their revolution, massing a re fleet along the far edge of the Reef; just outside the range of the Reefborn's scanners. In a stroke of luck for the Reef, the Last City had deployed its first satellites in centuries, built from technology salvaged from the Plaguelands and provided by the Reef in their agreement years prior; their initial scans detecting the gathering of Fallen vessels. Seeing the threat this waiting force posed to the Last City should the Reef fall, the Consensus mobilized its armies to intercept the lurking fleet.

Petra Venj, still serving as the Queen's Emissary, reminded the Consensus that a force of Guardians surging unannounced into the Reef would be seen as an act of war by the Reefborn, one that could easily spawn a conflict that would distract from the true threat. She claimed that Queen Sov's blessing of passage, and the assistance of her army, were a necessity in combating the resurgent threat of the Fallen. Though dissatisfied with playing Reefborn politics, the Consensus heeded Petra's advice, dispatching her to the Reef as their envoy. To represent the Last City's Guardians, the Vanguard elected to send the Young Wolf, whose feats had reached the ears of even the Reef, to escort the Queen's Emissary.

Arriving in the Reef aboard the Young Wolf's jumpship, the pair, alongside the Guardian's Ghost and Failsafe, were briefly accosted by the territorial Reef Guard. Wielding her proud reputation amongst the soldiers, Petra earned an audience with the Queen and her brother Uldren Sov. There, Petra and the Young Wolf informed Mara Sov of the hidden fleet that loomed on the Reef's shores, and requested a coalition between the Last City and Reefborn to squash the threat. Though Uldren denied this offer, seeing the Last City as nothing more than a dangerous element in the Solar System, Queen Sov accepted the alliance, for her plans against the Darkness demanded she protect Light.

Seeing that the Reef and Last City stood ready to unite against them, the Queen's Wolf Guard, who had chosen to side with Skolas in secret, made a desperate bid to assassinate her at the meeting; only to be put down by the Guardian, Petra, and Uldren. The last remaining of these traitors, Saviks, alerted Skolas of the alliance before succumbing to his wounds. With time running thin before the Guardians of Earth made their way to the Reef, Skolas launched his assembled forces against the Reef and its defenses.

In reply, Mara Sov fortified the Reef's many drifting space stations, mustering her army and setting them against the Fallen alliance. Needing a respected and seasoned leader to command her forces in the field, Mara Sov turned to Petra Venj, naming her as the new Queen's Wrath. Uldren was told to wait in the shadows, where his Crows could gather intelligence; though he wished to fight for his sister in battle. The Guardian, an immortal that she could sense held great power, was assigned by Queen Sov to serve alongside Petra Venj in the ensuing war.

The Exiles and their Scorned Barons tore through the Reef, devastating outposts and colonies on a rabid push for Mara Sov's capital station. When the Guardians of Earth arrived in the Reef, their power was stalemated by the Fallen guerilla tactics among the asteroid fields. The Second Reef War dragged on, slowly edging the Exiles closer and closer to victory.

The turn in this losing war appeared in Variks the Loyal, a docked Fallen from the near-extinct House of Judgement. He had joined Skolas' rebellion in hopes of reigniting his people's decaying culture, only to find the delusional and self-serving vision the Kell of Kells held for the Fallen. Fikrul's experiments in mutation and death had further disturbed him, seeing Fallen vivisected and exposed to dark texts that left them wailing in madness. He would not permit the Eliksni to fall once more.

Thus, he offered information on the Exiles to the City-Reef alliance, earning the trust of the Queen. The intelligence provided by Variks led the Guardians and Reef Guard to the Exiles' hidden fleetbase and staging ground in the Tangled Shore of the Reef. At the site were Skolas and the Scorned Barons, awaiting repairs to the former's personal Ketch to resume their campaign. The one chance at severing the House of Exiles' many heads laid in the palms of the Last City and Reef's hands. Assaulting the fleetbase, Guardian and Reef Guard forces devastated dozens of Skiffs and four Ketches, with several fireteams moving to board Skolas' capital ship.

Seeing the battle and the greater war was lost, Fikrul and his Scorned Barons gathered the few followers they could and fled back to the forbidden Moon. Abandoned by his allies, Skolas attempted to escape as well, only for the Young Wolf to fight their way into his ship's engine room and disable it.

As Skolas' remaining soldiers rallied, storming the Ketch to recover their leader from certain doom at the Guardians' hands, Petra was faced with a familiar decision. Remembering the mistake that had cost both her career and life within Reef, the Queen's Wrath held faith in the abilities of the Guardians, holding off from launching an airstrike on the beached Ketch.

The Young Wolf, while other Guardians battled Fallen across the ship, cornered Skolas aboard the bridge. The Kell of Kells stood bravely against the warrior, fighting with a Scorch Cannon and the blades he had defected with months ago. Though Skolas fought with rabid fervor, it was not enough. The Guardian nearly killed the Kell of Kells in the battle, dragging his broken form out to be displayed before his followers. The sight of their beaten leader shattered the Wolves' resolve, spurring most to surrender.

With the war over, the Queen had the Fallen rebels jailed within the Prison of Elders, within which the Reef's most infamous criminals were left to rot, with favored Variks to serve as their warden. Skolas' mind was rendered little more than tatters by his imprisonment, degenerating into maddened ramblings on dark shapes. The flight of Fikrul and his Exiles to the Moon would be dealt with later, as the Reef demanded restoration after the crippling conflict. In a move to facilitate a more permanent alliance, the Consensus sent surplus supplies to the Reefborn Awoken, stationing volunteer Guardians to man outposts and patrol the Reef as their blue-skinned people worked to rebuild.

The Young Wolf, having earned the title of "the Kellbreaker", was granted a special audience with Queen Sov, who spoke of her newfound debt to them. She proclaimed they would always be welcome in the Reef, that she would turn to them first in times of crisis.

The Traveler was pleased, for its dearest pawns had gained acquaintance.


	17. Prince of Corpses

XVII: Prince of Corpses

The Moon had been too quiet.

For many decades since the Great Disaster, it had watched the Earth. In turn, Eris Morn had worked to comprehend the Shapers, and in doing so learn how best to destroy them.

She had been first to join Eriana-3 in her doomed raid on Crota's lair, losing her eyes, Ghost, and Light in the depths of the Hellmouth. Clawing her way from its pits with an Ahamkara bone and the stolen eyes of an Acolyte, she had returned to the Last City, bearing a bottomless hatred for the Shapers, only to find Humanity too fearful to face the death-worshipping race.

Disgusted, she had traveled to the far edge of the Reef to study the Shapers in secret, only to be approached by an erratic white light. This bleached specter was Toland, their former guide into the Hellmouth, thought dead by the dreadful hymn of a Deathsinger. With him, he brought Shaper texts, all inexplicably stolen from the Worlds' Grave and purified of their dark taint, suppressing their infesting language. Armed with the knowledge of these tomes, Eris dedicated herself to conceiving a means of uprooting and annihilating the Shapers, with wise and clever Toland at her side.

A year after the Second Reef War, Eris used her Shaper magic to invade the mind of the Speaker, who had spent years of his own trying to understand the alien race. She filled his dreams with visions of perfect dark shapes and teeth, seeding fear in his heart. Eris did so to wear on the Speaker's faith in the Light, for she and Toland had discovered the machinations of the Hope-Eater and his sect. Crota, intent on mimicking the tactics of his father in campaigns long ago, had sent an army to infiltrate the Earth's defenses; their dreadful Seeders cloaked amid a harmless meteor shower. His hidden swarm would nestle in the eroded facilities of the Old Russian Cosmodrome, from where they could more closely observe the Traveler's recovery. And, when the time came to devour its Light alongside the Taken King, this army would be the first to strike the feeble Guardians, whose own eyes would be set upon the hollow Moon above.

Having seen how Crota prepared for events to come, Eris moved to disrupt his attempt at cunning. With stolen Fallen codes, they used fake transmissions to lead a Guardian patrol into the Cosmodrome and the force that grew below it. When these scouts stumbled upon the Hidden Swarm, barely escaping with their lives, they fled and reported their findings to the Consensus. Terror seized the council, who remembered all too well the ruin wrought in the Great Disaster. Having revealed the threat that laid at Humanity's borders, the Three-Eyed Woman and the Shattered Man returned to the Last City. From their hovel in the Southern Tower, Eris called for the Consensus to destroy this Hidden Swarm on Earth and initiate a new Lunar Campaign, one that could succeed with her and Toland's stolen knowledge. The Consensus, despite their fright, rejected her call to arms, holding far greater for the thought of failure should her plan fail.

But for the Speaker, this rejection was merely a mask. Recalling his nightmares of all-consuming death, he secretly agreed to supply Eris with Guardians, so long as they ended the threat to Humanity; just as Eris and Toland had intended. Covertly breaking the lunar interdiction imposed by the Consensus and himself, he dispatched a lone Guardian to the Moon, tasking him with seeking out the fabled Worlds' Grave for knowledge.

Among those selected for Eris' fireteams was the Kellbreaker, whom had served the past year as a liaison between the Last City and Reef, rarely battling Fallen pirates along the Reef borders. Eager to fight once more, they journeyed to the place that had spawned their fame. In the infested tunnels and warehouses of the Cosmodrome, they battled Shapers, pressing deeper into their territory than any other Guardian. At the center of the swarm, they encountered Omnigul, Will of Crota, who sang deathsongs inspired by the Hope-Eater's own sisters; each lyric laced with the Shapers' viral language and an old choir's tune. But rather than be obliterated, the Guardian shrugged off the witch's dirges and burned her to ash.

Upon hearing that the Guardian had survived Omnigul, Eris Morn was intrigued. None before had shown such an ability, to resist the dark words of the Shapers. When the Speaker reported he had lost contact with his lunar scout, she chose to test the Kellbreaker's true strength, directing them to seek out their outrider.

The Guardian ventured to the Moon, of which they had only heard monstrous legends. After a week of furtive searching, they found the dying scout, hidden in a cave outside the Temple of Crota. The man revealed he had breached the shrine in his hunt for the Worlds' Grave, and in doing so learned that the Hope-Eater had receded into his Ascendant Realm, to heal from a far-off campaign in a place of brass machines. With this, he died from his wounds.

Seeing that an opportunity to slay Crota had presented itself, Eris Morn ordered the Kellbreaker to steal the Hope-Eater's physical sword from inside the Temple. With it and their knowledge of Shaper faith, she and Toland could hope to breach the Ascendant Plane and destroy the god-prince themselves.

The Guardian fought into the Temple's inner sanctum, finding the four Swarm Princes that safeguarded Crota's blade within. When their bullets failed to pierce the armor of these Shaper warriors, desperation drove the Guardian to take up the Hope-Eater's sword in their own hands. With clumsy yet powerful strikes, the sword slew its own defenders. Crota felt the disturbance in his tithing caused by these deaths, and the alien presence that clutched his honed weapon. He set his sect into a rage across the Moon, swarming the grey terrain in a sea of ancient chitin in search of the invader.

Eris Morn had long dreamed of vengeance, of hearing Crota's tormented cries in person. But it seemed fate had denied her that personal pleasure. This Guardian, who possessed an odd and uniquely resilient Light, was to claim that prize. Thus, she led the Guardian to the Hellmouth, and told them to jump.

With no hope of escaping to Earth, the Guardian made the descent into the pit's cavernous maw, and began walking within the Abyss. Nearly blind in the black depths, they cut through the flood of Thrall, Knights, and Ogres that came to meet them, reaching the gateway to Crota's Ascendant Realm. Unknown to the Guardian, it was the power imbued in them by the Traveler, of both mending Light and rending Darkness, that allowed them to pierce the barrier of this gate, not the sword they wielded. They stepped into Crota's throne-world of green soulfire and mountain strongholds. Fighting across and through a great many bridges and tunnels, they came to stand before Crota, the Hope-Eater, under the oppressive eye of his Oversoul.

Though still healing from his wounds, the prideful god-prince chose to do battle with the warrior. He fell upon the Guardian with his ethereal blade, who struggled to deflect and evade the demon's strikes. However, in this moment, the altered Light that laid within the Guardian ignited, driven into action by the Darkness that surrounded it. Guided by its influence, the warrior wove past Crota's attacks and cut deep into his legs, forcing the god-prince to kneel before them. With a great and mighty blow, the Guardian cleaved the god-prince in twine, and the Hope-Eater let loose a wail of anger and agony that echoed through the cosmos.

Still guided by the alien presence, the Guardian forged Crota's physical sword and remnant soul into a gun, the Necrochasm, which spoke faintly of perfect shapes. Crota's world began to dim with his true death, so the god-killer fled its confines. On the Moon's grey surface, the Shapers of Crota's sect scattered in panic at the sight of the warrior, fleeing from the Guardian. The hero returned to Earth, where Eris Morn, Toland and the Speaker revealed their deception to the Consensus. Though distrustful of the scheming trio, the Consensus praised the Guardian for their feat in slaying the Hope-Eater, granting them the title of "Crota's End".

After so long, the Moon no longer sparked terror. Instead, it shone as an image of hope.

Meanwhile, the Traveler was pleased, for its ignorant weapon had slain a true follower of the Darkness. In destroying Crota, the Guardian had absorbed his power, and in doing so had bound themselves to his father's pantheon of tithing. Through this, they would wither the Darkness' killing strength into nothing, and uproot the Black Garden at its source, the Gardener, who rested in his fields of roses and iron-leaved trees.

The Traveler need only continue to lie in its false slumber, watching as its weapon honed its deceptive edge.

However, many galaxies away, a father had heard the cry and felt the death of his son, and was seized by rage. His own grand plan, to await the Light's restoration and devour its reborn brilliance, had been ruined. And with it, his favored son had been slain. Furthermore, the Taken King could sense the leech gnawing at his tithing, draining him of his might in death for itself.

Oryx, in this moment of fury and shock, realized the Traveler had created a parasite, a creature that fed from life and death alike. A threat to everything that he and his race stood for, a threat to his faith.

The Taken King set his Dreadnaught and its fleet into motion, on a slow voyage to the Solar System. He would stamp out this shimmering Light before it could glow. He would have vengeance.


	18. Prophet's Exile

XVIII: Prophet's Exile

As Humanity had waged war against the Fallen and Shapers, machines had labored tirelessly on the burning metal surface of Mercury. None had questioned their motives, none had postulated on their schemes.

None except Osiris.

For this questioning, he was labelled a heretic and rabble-rouser, and exiled from the Last City. Despite his expungement, his queries and prophecies had sparked questions in the minds of others. Some near three hundred souls, including one hundred Guardians, abandoned the Last City, accompanying the man they believed could save Humanity.

In landing on Mercury's stone-metal surface, they found the Vex, toiling in the scorching heat and sand to continuously refine the machine world. They assailed the Followers with bolts of red and purple fire, only to be answered by the awesome power of Osiris and his fellow Guardians. For three weeks, the exiles trekked across Mercury, searching for a safe haven on the hostile planet. Salvation came when Osiris salvaged the mind core of a Vex Minotaur, using it to experience visions of a nigh-impenetrable Vex tower. He led his tired company to the tower and single-handedly seized it from the Vex, guided by his insight into the machine's network. This act solidified his Followers' faith in him, who came to look upon him as a messiah.

Naming their new home the Lighthouse, Osiris and his Followers took to salvaging Vex technology for study, embarking on expeditions into the burning landscape in search of wandering drones. Their greatest discovery came when Vance, a quiet and devoted Follower of Osiris, attempted to wield a Vex Hydra's intact mind core as Osiris had. Though rendered blind in the process, he saw images of a forest beyond time, whose entrance laid in the great pyramid that stood before their sanctum.

Taking the Hydra's mind core with him, Osiris approached the pyramid, whose front face split to reveal a gleaming gateway. Flanked by thoughtful and loyal Kabr, inquisitive Praedyth, and lively Pahanin, he stepped through the passage. Together, they stepped into an ever-shifting world of impossible geometry. After what seemed like days of harrowing travel, they came across three infinitely tall spires. Within it, using the captured mind core, Osiris connected to the Vex network's library, learning that the realm they stood within was the Infinite Forest; a virtual reality powered by Mercury's machine core. Through it, the Vex could simulate and predict entire timelines, each monitored by the Gate Lords, whose eyes allowed them to move unabated through the Forest. No sooner had Osiris learned this that the reigning Gate Lord Acanthos discovered him and his fireteam, casting them back into reality.

Seeing the wealth of knowledge to be gained by claiming the eye of a Gate Lord, Osiris devised a scheme to seize one. Leading expeditions across the Mercurian surface and into the Infinite Forest, he disrupted Vex simulations and construction operations, drastically upsetting the machine's calculations with his unpredictable Light. Provoked by these continued attacks, the towering Acanthos stepped into the real world to be faced by Osiris and his Followers. Kabr tore Acanthos' central eye from its metal socket, while Osiris melted its armor with fire. With the battle won, the prophet Guardian used the Gate Lord's stolen eye to peer deeper into the Vex network than he had ever done before.

For the next two days, Osiris locked himself inside his quarters, going unseen by even his Ghost. On the third day, he entered the Lighthouse's observatory, proclaiming he would journey into the Infinite Forest alone to face a Vex he called "Panoptes". His Followers protested, Vance and Kabr loudest among them, but the exiled prophet ignored their pleas. To Vance, he gifted a braille tome which contained his many writings; to Kabr, he gifted the role of leadership. With that, he disappeared into the Forest's gateway, his Ghost at his side and Acanthos' eye in his hand.

Hoping to learn Osiris' intent, Kabr tasked Vance with interpreting the prophet's tome of New Prophecies. Vance found it told of how the many-eyed Panoptes sought to calculate a perfect pattern, and how its equation would be executed in a vault forged of radiolaria glass. Most importantly, it spoke of how find this vault, itself hidden deep within Mercury's core.

Kabr, believing Osiris had entrusted the Followers with destroying this vault while he stopped Panoptes, led his fellow Guardians in an assault on the vault, guided by Vance's directions; whom remained in the Lighthouse with the other mortal Followers. A long day of treading led the Guardians to the vault, and Kabr led his army through its massive doors, losing contact with the Lighthouse.

A day later, only a shivering and fearful Pahanin returned to the Lighthouse, mumbling of lights that chimed death, a great guard that invoked fanatics, and crushing loneliness. Despite their best efforts, the Followers failed to rouse Pahanin from his newfound madness.

With no able Guardians left to defend them, the mortal Followers turned to trusted Vance for guidance. The blind man ordered all but one of the Lighthouse's entrance be sealed, so that no Vex could enter its confines unseen, and that the Followers armor themselves with pieces of salvaged Vex, so that they could fight the machines if need be. He proclaimed they would wait in the Lighthouse, making only brief and daring runs to gather needed resources from Mercury's surface and Vex, and that they would study Osiris' prophecies for answers. From their safe haven, they would await their savior.

They would await Osiris' return.


	19. Time's Vengeance

XIX: Time's Vengeance

The months after Crota's death had seen Humanity become filled with pride and hope anew. Safer access to resources had permitted the Last City to expand its borders, its blocks growing wider and taller as new additions were made. The Guardians, reinvigorated by the originally clandestine Second Lunar Campaign, fought with newfound fervor against Fallen pirates and Shapers that attempted to infest Earth's surface.

However, no eyes turned to Mercury.

Order of Refractions Vanguard Ikora Rey, amidst a review of Light-based radiation, was approached by Cryptarch Master Rahool with a heavily-encrypted engram, which the Cryptarchy's best minds had failed to unravel. Being skilled in decryption herself, Ikora took up the challenge of deciphering it. After five days of study, she found that the engram's deep code bore an uncanny resemblance to one created by her former master Osiris, one that he had used to converse with her in secrecy prior to his exile. On a hunch, she input her reply sequence, and the engram decrypted into a set of coordinates, aimed at Mercury, and a simple message: _MERCURY STIRS, TIME WAILS_.

Though perplexed by the message, the Vanguard ignored them, as Osiris had long ago been deemed an outcast. Ikora Rey, though she agreed with the council's ruling, held her own reservations. Her master had been quiet for many decades. To hear words from him now meant he had either gone mad, or that he truly required help. Despite her better judgement, Ikora Rey decided to send a scout to Mercury, if only to investigate. And she knew just the Guardian for the task.

In the time since Crota's death, his slayer had grown increasingly bored. With Guardians acting with new vigor, Crota's End had been left with little to do beyond patrol secured regions for infiltrations by overconfident Fallen and Shapers. This fatigue from inaction was unknowingly driven by their purpose under the Traveler's design, which demanded they face the Darkness' minions and grow in strength through killing them. Thus, when Ikora Rey proposed a scouting mission to an uncharted world, they gladly accepted, against the cautioning words of their Ghost and Failsafe. Ikora gifted them the code that had sparked her concern, believing it would assist their efforts. With that, the Guardian departed.

They returned to the Tower the next day, calling to speak with Ikora immediately. Meeting them in her study, Ikora found Crota's End carried a sack of broken machine parts, each utterly alien in design. The Refractive Vanguard demanded a report, and the Guardian divulged their tale.

The warrior had arrived on Mercury, whose surface was quiet and still, following the engram's coordinates to a looming tower besieged by Vex, as a great pyramid shifted and restructured itself periodically. Fighting through the machines, the Guardian entered the tower and met the Followers, who approached them with weary rifles at the ready. Explaining their dispatchment by Ikora, the warrior was brought before Vance as he parsed the New Prophecies, presenting the code uncovered by the Vanguard. Vance, deciding the Guardian's words held truth, welcomed them into the Lighthouse and recited the Follower's experiences there. He made mention of how they were the second Guardian to arrive on Mercury since them, the first being the famed Saint-14, who had boldly stepped into the Infinite Forest in search of Osiris.

The Followers revealed that the Vex had become agitated in the past few weeks, leading to great shifts around the Infinite Forest's gateway and beneath the surface. In learning of Osiris' message to Ikora, Vance determined the man still lived, yet remained in the Forest for an unknown reason. Knowing only a Guardian could dare step into the realm of simulations, Vance invited Crota's End to journey there. Seeking a challenge, the Guardian accepted.

Walking through the entrance, they were immediately assailed by the Gate Lord Zydron, who had been stationed to prevent future invasions since Osiris' initial intrusion. Though the Axis Mind attempted to expel the Guardian from the Infinite Forest, their warped Light resisted the effort, and they slew the Gate Lord. Remembering Vance's recounting of Osiris stealing Acanthos' eye, Crota's End chose to take Zydron's for their own. From there, they traversed the Forest, fighting through one combat simulation after another; facing false Fallen, Shapers, and Vex in ample supply.

Combining the code with their stolen eye, the Guardian had been led to the Three Trees of Probability that supported the Forest's every simulation. Within the Tree of Present, they found the Reflections of Osiris, beings whose bodies were comprised of golden pixels and electrons. Created by the exile using the Forest to explore its far expanses faster, the Reflections had protected their creator in the Tree's core, leading the Guardian to him.

There, Crota's End had found the true and distraught Osiris.

Through his ranting, he revealed that Panoptes had successfully deduced a solution to the Pattern, one where all things were removed in favor of the Vex. In desperation, he had gone to face the Infinite Mind, only to be broken by its vision for reality. Defeated, he hid himself in the Three Trees of Probability, which Panoptes would not risk destroying, sending his Reflections to slow Panoptes' efforts as long as possible. Using the Infinite Forest's network, he had sent his message to Ikora, hoping she would send a Guardian army to combat the Vex.

He had despaired to see only one before him. But this Guardian was one he had never seen in his visions or in the Vex simulations. They were of a different Light, a greater Light, one that even Osiris, in his fractured state, could recognize. And they sought a challenge.

Thus, the Exiled Prophet had gifted them the coordinates of Panoptes' throne in the Infinite Forest, and set them loose upon the Vex. The warrior had carved through the Forest's many layers of digital reality to find Panoptes, its body crafted in the image of a fearsome king of shapes. When the Infinite Mind attempted to wield its absolute control over the Forest, the Guardian resisted, cutting through hordes of false foes with their Light. Burying their fists in Panoptes' all-seeing eye, they had torn it asunder, deleting its meticulously-crafted Solution to the Pattern with it.

In returning to Osiris, they learned that while the victory algorithm had been erased at the source, it still remained in the mind of another Axis Mind, Atheon, whom lay nestled safely in the Vault of Glass. The subterranean stronghold was a testbed, a place where the Vex had learned to manipulate reality at its most basic foundations. Within its walls, Atheon would execute the Solution by bridging the past, present, and future, allowing the Vex to spread themselves across all its corners. He had hoped that Kabr and his fellows would prove capable of killing Atheon, but the Axis Mind had continued to operate long after he'd tasked them with the deed. Desperate, Osiris begged the Guardian to take up their duty, and they had welcomed it.

Escorting Osiris out of the Infinite Forest and back to the Lighthouse, the Guardian went to scarred Pahanin, asking him to recall his experience in the Vault. With shivers of fear, he recalled gazing upon the Oracles, who erased all who were engulfed by their glow. Knowing Humanity and the greater universe relied upon them, Osiris implored Pahanin to join him and the Guardian in their mission. Hoping to avenge his fallen allies, Pahanin, though hesitant, accepted.

With Osiris and Pahanin at their side, the Guardian breached the Vault of Glass' sealed entrance, pushing through its Vex Praetorian defenders. Inside its dark caverns, they came face to face with the Templar, warden of the Vault, and its legions of fanatics. Pahanin trembled before the Axis Mind, whose protective barrier erased anything it touched, even blows born from Light. It battered the three Guardians with projectiles of anti-matter, while the Oracles, with their dreadful chimes, began to cast their excising light.

Just as the world grew red with the Vex's redactive power, the Guardian's eyes had fallen upon a rusted shield, whose gleam was defiant and pure. A voice called for them to seize it, and they did, raising it to block out the Oracle's shine and defend from the Templar's blows.

The voice was Kabr's, a message left to those who would wield it. He and his army had fallen there, gunned down by the Templar and erased by the Oracles. With only himself and Pahanin remaining in the end, he had ordered the other man to flee, so that one could recount the Vault's horrors and prepare for a renewed invasion. Caught in the blinding glare of the Oracles, he resolved himself to a final plan for the future. Thus, Kabr, using his dying Light, had planted a cyst in the Vex network, a burning Light that refused to be cut away by Vex and their precise science.

A pulse of disruptive Light erupted from this Aegis, disabling the Templar's once impenetrable barrier. Squashing the machine under a flood of Light and bullets, the trio proceeded into the Glass Throne to find Atheon had already enacted the Solution, converting the chamber into a conflux in time. With patience, it would expand, allowing the Vex to become the only thing in existence.

With its new power, the towering machine of hardened glass cast Osiris into Mercury's burning past, and summoned Vex of pristine and dilapidated appearance to face Pahanin and the Guardian. When Crota's End moved to strike Atheon, they were thrown onto a Mercury far in the future; if all was continue from where they had been jettisoned. In the distance, they saw dark shapes descending on worlds of radiolaria; drowning white light in imperceptible black. Ignoring the sight, the Guardian deliberated on a means of returning to the past, only to look upon the shield in their grasp. Wielding the Aegis' connection to the Vex network, the Guardian used their unknowingly warped Light to tear a brief hole back into their present.

The Vex were stunned by the unnatural power running through their network, permitting the Guardian to step backwards and pull Osiris from oblivion in the distant past. Atheon, struggling to recover, unleashed a temporal pulse to scatter their atoms across the timeline, only for the Guardian and Aegis' combined power to resist the attack. The Guardian, Kabr's Aegis in hand, shattered Atheon's body and set fire to its radiolaria, erasing the last trace of the Solution.

Returning to the Lighthouse, Crota's End had offered for Osiris and his Followers to return with them to the Last City, if only to warn of the Vex. They had refused, knowing better than to ease their tired minds, as many equations led to the same solution. They had chosen to remain on Mercury, so to monitor the machines for their inevitable attempts at restoring their broken Pattern. But Osiris had told the Guardian to not speak of their time in the Vault, to mention it only to his pupil. The Vex were a threat best left hidden from the Last City, one that its denizens should not trouble themselves over. It was easier to let Osiris and his Followers remain known as madmen chasing Golden Age technology, than risk attracting fools who would in turn meddle with things they did not understand. With that, the Guardian had handed the Aegis to Osiris, and departed to Earth.

In her study, the Guardian presented Ikora Rey a tome, one which contained Osiris' many years of research both inside and outside the Infinite Forest. He had written it for her to grasp the threat of the Vex, so that she above all others would be prepared to face them should the time come.

Ikora, respecting her former mentor's wishes, hid the Vex from her peers among the Vanguard and Consensus, working to solve new theories from Osiris' studies and her own experiments with the Vex components provided to her. Meanwhile, Crota's End retired to their former routine. Though their worrying Ghost and Failsafe assistant grumbled over their careless approach to the harrowing experience, the Guardian's hunger for adventure was sated, and they were pleased.

Unknown to them all, a king drew closer.


	20. King's Decree

XX: King's Decree

The Taken King had arrived in the Solar System, a year after the death of his loyal son. Few had expected him, none were prepared for him. As he and his dread fleet drew closer and closer to the Reef and Earth, many inner circles scrambled to meet his wrath.

The Nine, with their clairvoyant power, had perceived his arrival months prior, and resigned themselves to destruction. None that they knew could challenge him, and thus their hope for corporeality through the Light would die, and likely even the Solar System that sustained them.

Their agents receded from the Reef, leaving Mara Sov with words of warning for the threat on the edge of their home. But Mara Sov would not bow.

In the Taken King, she saw the same murderous dark that she had glimpsed in the Distributary; the same that threatened her people's entire existence. Before, her plan had been to outlast this king of shapes through careful defense, but now she saw that he could only be answered with war. She would slay the Taken King, no matter the cost to herself. Where the king favored the sword-logic of simple attacks and retreats, she would wield the bomb-logic of complex subterfuge and fallback plots. She merely needed to learn how to slay a god-king, so that she could devise such a bomb.

To this end, she called upon Eris Morn and Toland, who had worked quietly to unseat the Shapers from the Moon. Eris proclaimed she had long anticipated, and even wished for, the Taken King's arrival on their shores, so that she could help carve him from the universe. From his communion with Shaper relics, Toland stated that the king sought to claim vengeance for his son's demise, a deed done by the famed Guardian known as Crota's End. They had since returned to serving as a liaison between the Last City and Reef, working to keep relations between both parties intact while engaging Fallen pirates that persisted along the borders.

Mara Sov knew the warrior, remembering their bizarre Light, but did not believe they could face the Shaper god alone. Eris Morn cited the Guardian's uncanny ability to outright ignore the viral language of intact Shaper texts, a feat achieved by no other, and their triumph in slaying Crota. Mara Sov admitted this power surprised her, and accepted that the Guardian was the only solution to their dilemma.

Thus, the three forged their scheme to slay a king.

As they plotted, terror gripped the Traveler. Its weapon had only been borne against fanatical marauders and machines who worshipped science. In slaying Crota, they had been lucky to face him in a moment of weakness, rather than his full and terrible strength. Its chosen had not yet tested themselves against the flesh of god-kings. Though it trembled, the Great Machine listened to the scheme that the Queen and Three-Eyed Woman crafted, and chose to watch its enactment.

Mara Sov summoned the Guardian to her throne room in the Reef, informing them of how a new Shaper threat loomed on the system's edge. She stopped the ambassador when they suggested alerting the Consensus, saying they only needed Crota's End to slay their opponent. The Guardian hesitantly agreed to join the Queen on her campaign, bringing the Necrochasm that held Crota's soul to raise morale; while also using Failsafe to send a discreet report to the Vanguard of the situation.

Her plan in motion, the Queen assembled the First Fleet of the Awoken, an armada of customized Fallen Ketches and Galliots built from scavenged materials. Knowing her people, nor her devoted brother Uldren, would not bear to know the true nature of her design, the Queen proclaimed that victory was assured against the threat that they flew to face, and that she would return with a king's crown in her hand. The Reef Awoken rejoiced, and Mara Sov felt distant pangs of sorrow in her heart.

Though her Queen's Wrath, Petra Venj, was eager to fight in her name, the Queen appointed her as the Acting Regent-Commander of the Reef, and instructed her to maintain order in her absence. With that, the Queen of the Awoken led her fleet to meet the king of shapes.

Along the rings of Saturn, they clashed with the Shapers in the soundless void of space. The Awoken ships, with their greater maneuverability, tore through the slow-moving Shaper fleet. All except the Dreadnaught, whose carved and dry worm hide was undamaged despite the Awoken's efforts. The Guardian offered to board the vessel using their jumpship, to which the Queen permitted. She then set her Harbingers upon the great warship, though still to no effect.

In reply, the Taken King unleashed his Oversoul onto the fragile materium. He annihilated the Awoken fleet and his own, disintegrating all not aboard his Dreadnaught; the Guardian and Queen among them.

But Mara Sov had depended on this attack, for she lashed her soul to the power bestowed by Riven's granted wishes, seizing the Guardian's own essence as well. With the power of the dark-light, she shielded them both from the Oversoul's mangling presence. She tossed the Guardian's soul into the Taken King's Dreadnaught, through an opening formed by the Harbingers' seemingly ineffectual attack.

The Guardian's hidden abilities, driven by a feral and programmed instinct, began feeding on the power held by the Taken King, using it to restore the figure and their machine companions to life. Awakening along the Dreadnaught's trenches, they were marveled by their survival, having been knocked unconscious by the Oversoul's blast, and were horrified by the ruins of the fleet that surrounded the ancient vessel.

Her part played, Mara Sov discreetly retreated to the Dreaming City to recover from her feat. If all worked as planned, Eris Morn would lead the Guardian to the Taken King, and the king of shapes would fall. But when she arrived, she found that same king walking its grounds, each step spreading his bilious Darkness. Unable to resist the king, Mara Sov fled to her throne world Eleusinia, sealing herself in its confines. The First Navigator, ever curious, searched the wished-for city, finding Riven coiled around its great founding pillar. She engaged in a game of bargains with the god-king, who answered with blackfire in his hand.

Thus, the Taken King Took Riven, and bade her to hold the Dreaming City.

From atop her throne, Mara Sov despaired.


	21. King's Fall

XXI: King's Fall

The Taken King made ready to devour the Traveler. He would avenge his son, feast on the Light, and doing so become synonymous with death.

However, when he urged his Dreadnaught to move through space, its engines stalled. In their destruction by the Oversoul, the Harbingers had produced a field that inhibited the warship's mechanisms, leaving it unable to leave Saturn's rings until the disruption was removed; another piece of Mara Sov's scheme. Setting his daughters Ir Halak and Ir Anûk upon the task, Oryx turned to the inner Solar System with a new plan in mind.

Across the Reef's scattered asteroids and Earth's scarred landscapes, dark twisted things sprouted from bulbous pulsating blights. The Taken, in all their perfect horror, had been loosed upon the Traveler's half-dug grave. They surged across both realms, rending and infecting everything they touched with Darkness. The Awoken Paladins fought to defend the Reef's city stations, while Humanity mobilized its Guardians to stand at the Last City's Walls. Nonetheless, they were unprepared for the Taken. As they battled the enemy, the warped visages of Fallen, Shapers, and even unrecognizable Vex began to crash against their defenses. Most horrifying of the sights were that of humans, distorted and molded into lanky and long-taloned creatures; Taken by the King to fill his prey with dread.

As the Solar System fought against its new foe, Eris Morn and Toland moved to further their strategy. Using stolen Shaper magic, Eris contacted the Guardian, who in their restored state had been stumbling through the Dreadnaught's labyrinthian innards. Cloaked by the Harbingers' disruptive energies, they were guided by the Three-Eyed Woman to the Hall of Souls, where a gate to the Dreadnaught's inner chambers resided; guarded by Thalnok, Fanatic of Crota. The Guardian who had slain the god-prince quickly slew this mimicry, and stepped through the gate.

Drawing closer to the Taken King's personal chamber, they were met by the Court of Oryx, the handpicked warriors of the god-king. Their Necrochasm in hand, whose dark-light bullets drained the killing power from those it felled, the Guardian forged through the Court, unaware that they stole the Taken King's tribute in doing so. The First Navigator felt these deaths, felt the loss of tribute that suddenly gnawed at his core, and turned his gaze away from the Earth and Reef. His three eyes fell upon a void, into which his tribute had seemingly disappeared.

With a kingly thought, he peered through the disruption caused by the Harbingers, to see that the slayer of his son still lived. But furthermore, their warped and leeching Light was not only intact, but burning brighter by the moment. He watched as they carved through his brood, a remnant of his son's sword and soul in their hands.

At his core, the King felt rage, for the loss of his son, and curiosity, for the murderer's power was uniquely vile. It was his nature to understand, and in this moment he was compelled to learn.

Thus, when the warrior came to stand before his chamber's doors, Oryx bid them passage, severing the link between them and their three-eyed companion. Inside, they laid witness to Oryx, to his dark stature and crown of deathly rite. Fear coiled up their form, and the Taken King smiled.

The King reached out his hand, and let blackfire seize the Guardian. He would Take their odd Light, and wield it to slay the traitorous Great Machine. In seeing its weapon face total corruption, and knowing its own doom would follow it, the Traveler dropped its facade of weakness.

And so, a new Great Light surged through the Solar System, blinding to those of Light and Darkness. The wave crashed against the Dreadnaught and struck the chosen Guardian. The warrior became enveloped by this Light, fighting to free them from the twisting Darkness that held them.

But in this clash, within which raw Light and Darkness fought with lies, the old truth was summoned forth. It spilled into the chosen Guardian, plucking them from the grip of Darkness and the bonds of Light. Brilliant wings of fire burst from their back, and from their fragment of Crota's sword, they forged a tool with which to exert their terrible new strength: the Dawnblade, a perfect melding of death and life; a true work of hope and sorrow.

With their sword of old understandings, the dead thing fell upon Oryx, who retreated to the bow of the Dreadnaught. Ir Halak and Ir Anûk, loyal to their kingly father, moved to face the luminous intruder, singing their odes of destruction. They and their Deathsongs were drowned out by the roaring melody of the Dawnblade.

Having none left to defend him, Oryx called upon the Darkness to aid him, only to receive no reply. It and the Architects sought to witness the new power before it in all its horrid might. Oryx, whom they had long anticipated would betray them, as defined by their own teachings, would serve as an excellent test subject.

Left alone, the Taken King met the Guardian in battle, meeting them blow for blow on the bow of his ancient vessel. But it was simply not enough. With a piercing strike, the Guardian plunged the Dawnblade into the Taken King's ravenous heart and cast his corpse into the ringed world below. And with that strike, Oryx's broods became scattered, their faith broken. The Taken, without a king to guide them, dispersed and fled back to the Dreadnaught. Across the Solar System, triumphant cries from Humanity, Awoken, and even the undetectable Nine could be heard.

The Guardian had won the day.

Yet, in this moment of triumph, the Traveler felt only horror. In the depths of its chosen Guardian and their Ghost's minds, it perceived seeds of forbidden understanding. At the crux of their souls, it saw the old truth.

The pair had seen the grey force that guided the universe, before the Logics or their dogmatic understandings of life and death. How it had allowed for a time of freedom, one cast aside for form and function under living ideologies. The Traveler, in its foolish desperation, had revealed the dual lie of Light and Darkness.

It had birthed a weapon that would seek its own creator's destruction.

Panicked, the Traveler gripped the reins that still remained over its weapon. Seizing their chosen Guardian and Ghost's minds, it suppressed the memories of their epiphanies. The Guardian's fearsome wings withered into nothing, and the Dawnblade disappeared in their hands, both locked deep within their subconscious.

For now, they were unaware. For now, they had been returned to subservience.

Eris Morn restored her link to them, stating she had felt Oryx's death. The Guardian, unable to remember the act, merely accepted her word and praise, and that the Last City's.

Meanwhile, at the black edge of the cosmos, the Architects stirred. The Traveler's charade of deep recovery had been cast aside, and their opportunity to heal the Black Garden and its tender had presented itself. The great fleet of dark shapes set itself for the Solar System, the Traveler's waiting grave. Finally, the war would be complete.


	22. The Mad Prince

XXII: The Mad Prince

To Humanity, the universe seemed to be on the correct course. After centuries of inactivity, their beloved Traveler had seemingly awoken. The dark king who threatened their way of life had been slain, with his hordes placed into disarray.

A celebration was held in honor of this victory, with decorations and memorializations of those who had come before being placed all across the Last City. The Guardian was proclaimed Kingslayer, their image immortalized in the Hall of Triumph alongside the likes of Saint-14, Ana Bray, and the Iron Lords. Some, within even the Consensus, proposed the proclamation of a Second Golden Age.

While all seemed well in the Last City, the same could not be said for the Reef. Unlike the Earthbound refuge, the Reef was in shambles. Their Queen, alongside her brother and Techeuns, were presumed dead, leaving only a handful of individuals to lead the Reef Awoken. Petra Venj stood to claim the throne in her Queen's absence, yet she refused the crown, for her loyalty ran deep and true. Yet despite her best efforts, Venj could not maintain peace in the Reef, whose territories fell into lawlessness. Just as the House of Wolves and Kings began a new wave of piracy, the House of Exiles, still led by Fikrul, resurfaced; driven from their hideout on the Moon by Oryx's ravenous Taken.

With nowhere else to go, the Exiles had returned to the Reef, seeking to perfect Fikrul's hideous death experiments. Their infamous guerilla tactics on the Awoken settlements, coupled with the other Houses' more conventional methods, overwhelmed the Reef Guard, whose ranks were spread too thin by the doomed Battle of Saturn to handle the threats. With time, the Reef Awoken populace grew to resent Petra for her perceived ineptitude, reminiscing on memories of their fair and dependable Queen.

But not all of the royal family had been lost to them. Uldren Sov, loyal brother of the Queen, had survived the Battle of Saturn, his Galliot having been at the edge of Oryx's Oversoul attack. Believed to have been caught in the blast by the other survivors, he had been abandoned in the planet's rings as the First Fleet's remnants fled back to the Reef.

For two days, he had drifted there, cold and alone. He despaired over his sister's apparent death, and, in his hopeless grieving, wished he had possessed the power to save her.

In reply, he heard a voice of starlight. It called for him to free her.

Driven by this voice, the loyal prince repaired his Galliot, scavenging the needed components from the debris field around him. Making his way back to the Reef's edge, Uldren was captured by the House of Exiles and brought before Fikrul. Just as the Fanatic prepared to execute the man, darkness spilled from Uldren's form, further infecting Fikrul's Ether with its touch. Fikrul's corrupted essence was warped beyond recognition by this infusion, and his mind glimpsed those of a great schemer and her wish-granter. They murmured forbidden knowledge in his ears, and gifted him a means to free his people from their enslavement to the Ether.

Thus, Fikrul learned to raise the dead from their graves, their walking corpses bearing sickly blue pustules, and named these abominations his Scorn. Indebted to the Awoken prince, Fikrul pledged his undying loyalty to him; as did his fellow Scorned Barons and Exiles. Uldren, driven by the voice's word, accepted the Fallen's servitude with open arms.

Resuming his quest, the prince returned to the Reef Awoken colonies with his entourage of Fallen and Scorn. Though the people were at first aghast at the sight of him, for his body dripped Darkness, his words won their aching hearts. By the voice's command, he declared that the Queen still lived, and she remained trapped in a city of dreams.

Petra Venj, having sent portions of her remaining Queen's Guard to investigate the Dreaming City's status, knew its secret Gateway had been sealed, seemingly from the inside. Knowing that tampering with the forces of the Ascendant Realm could easily spell doom for the Awoken, she challenged Uldren's push to unlock its doors.

However, she failed to gauge the people's enamorment with the Queen, and their detestment of her. Uldren's words had eased their pain and brought them hope, rallying under his banner against her. With even members of her Queen's Guard defecting to Uldren, Petra was forced into hiding with her few loyalists along the Tangled Shore.

Seeing that the Reef would soon fall into complete chaos, and wishing to escape Fikrul's insanity, Variks the Loyal abandoned the Prison of Elders, leaving its hundreds of spiteful inmates to escape as its aged systems quickly decayed from disrepair. He fled into the Reef's outskirts, where he knew some Fallen still spoke the old language of the Eliksni.

With the Reef Awoken territory now firmly under his control, Uldren was met with an image of his sibling. Kneeling before his Queen and sister, he asked how to free her.

She pointed to the black mist that fell from his form, then towards the Traveler.

"Give your Darkness, and take its Light-ridden flesh," she proclaimed. "They will give you the key."

Uldren nodded, and prepared his people for war.


End file.
